The Hooligans at XCOM
by LukkiLewin
Summary: The year is 2035, and XCOM is on the move once more. But this time, it's different. Gone are the simple days of military protocol, of clean shaven hair cuts and standardized BDUs. Now, XCOM's scraping the bottom of the barrel, and it will have to embrace a new future. One filled with smugglers, terrorists, outright psychopaths, and pink mohawks. Lots and lots of pink mohawks.
1. Friends Within

As Claymore sat, listening to music on a cobbled together stereo while sitting on a rubber barstool that practically pulsated with lice and maggots, she reflected on her current state.

Her newest place of residence was a settlement called Golgotha. Twenty years ago, it had apparently been a popular tourist site, flooded with people who came to see its Mediterranean beauty. Now, it was a pile of shit on the verge of collapse. The only thing keeping it from turning into another empty ruin were the human lives rooted there, stubbornly clinging to the broken masonry.

Claymore thought the name was appropriate. Golgotha was a place where people, animals, and things went to die. Its graveyard boasted a larger population than the town itself. Even the concrete, it seemed, got all fucked up, crumbling and softening the moment it was placed in the soil.

Golgotha's only bar happened to be the only "not shitty" building in the whole settlement – only by a slight margin, though. Its stone structure had pretty much eroded from rainfall, and rotted wooden support beams had been embedded into the ceiling to keep the place from collapsing. The walls were nonexistent, replaced with dark green tarps that had been chewed and pulped by maggots and moths.

These were adequate conditions compared to the sorry state of every other building in the settlement. Still, it didn't do a damn thing about the cold.

Claymore rubbed her hands again, growing impatient. She hadn't gotten her fix since her last move, and the withdrawal symptoms were kicking in. She was a bit grateful that the barkeep had some of her stuff in stock, but it was still the worst fucking service she'd seen in the last twenty years, and then some. The withdrawal had grown to the point where she was contemplating whether she should just kill the bartender and take whatever he had on him. It wouldn't be the first time she did it.

As if hearing her thoughts, the manager, a stocky Italian, emerged from the back, carrying a frothy blue drink in a dirty, pink plastic cup. Claymore really didn't give a shit if he washed it or not – she'd drunk so much crap during her wandering years that her body had become acclimated to it.

"Here you go, ma'am," the barkeep said. "Whiskey with crushed Elerium powder."

Claymore snatched the drink from his hand and began gulping it down. The thick, cloying liquid clung to her throat, and the powdered elerium tasted like sawdust dunked in gasoline. But it was worth it. She choked back the volatile mixture, and coughed for a bit before continuing.

God, that was the stuff. Claymore had, even before Unification, been something of an experimenter, dabbling with pot and crack. But when she hopped on the elerium bandwagon, boy did she grab on. Someone had told Claymore some time ago that elerium was some kind of superfuel, a power cell that could power the entire East European board with only a few grams. Claymore only laughed, thinking how typical it was that humans be given the key to all their energy problems, only to turn it into a shitty-tasting pick-me-up.

Still, she was glad for the elerium. It kept her senses sharp, and gave her a fighting edge even on the worst of days. Without either of those, she wouldn't have lasted a day outside of the ADVENT megacities.

Of course, there was the addiction to deal with, and the fact that she was probably charring her insides after consuming so much of the stuff. But that seemed like small shit compared to getting gutted by bandits, or worse.

Claymore was halfway through her drink when she heard the tarps shuffle behind her. Even in the din of the rain, she could hear footsteps, rain-clogged and heavy.

" _Ciao_!" shouted the barkeep, greeting the newcomer. "May I get you something to drink, _signore_?"

"No," whispered the stranger. His voice was a low growl, like an ancient diesel-powered engine.

"I'm here because I'm looking for someone," the stranger said. Claymore heard a shuffle, like a hand being withdrawn from a pocket. "Have you seen a person with a tattoo like this?"

Out of the corner of her eye, Claymore saw the barkeep lean forward, examining whatever the stranger had.

"Nope," he said, after a while. "Never seen nobody with a tat like that. And I seen a lot of tats in the past five years."

"I see," the stranger said. He turned to Claymore.

"Ma'am."

Claymore turned to the stranger, the last of her drink slithering down into her stomach. She got a good look at the man: Graying hairs, haphazard stubble. This guy had definitely seen better days pre-Unification. She noticed that he had one of those new-fangled Megacity sweaters, although this one was dirtied and torn. A shoulder strap was looped around his right shoulder, with a knife strapped snugly against it.

"I haven't seen any –" she began, stopping as she saw the picture hanging from the man's fingers. It was a hexagon, with an eye in its center. A star hung below the eye, and a line separated the hexagon into two halves.

As soon as she laid eyes on it, she lunged at the man, grabbing the trusty mag pistol that lay on her hip. The barkeep, knowing what was about to happen, booked it.

Her original plan had been to knock down the bastard with her pistol and pin him using sheer force. The glitch came when the stranger blocked her tackle. Claymore felt thick, rough fingers grab her wrist, before forcing her arm against her back. The smooth grip of the mag pistol slipped out of her hand, hitting the floor with a loud clack.

In response, Claymore kicked against her attacker's legs, planting a boot against his thigh. It was a tough bit of meat, barely shuddering under her assault. The stranger emphasized this fact by staying silent.

Claymore tried to sweep the man off his feet, but he caught on and applied an unnecessarily large amount of pressure against her arm. Which was fortunate for him, since Claymore could take an unusually large amount of punishment.

"Don't," he cautioned in that sandpaper voice. "I'm not here to fight."

Claymore still struggled, whipping around like she was having a seizure. The man and his grip didn't budge. Not one bit.

The man sighed, clearly unimpressed. "Alright," he said. "I'll let you go. Just hear me out."

Claymore felt the pressure loosen on her arm. She leaped forward, propelled by adrenaline and her elerium-fueled senses. She grasped her mag pistol in one moment, and was by the bar counter in another. With the pistol pointed at her assailant, she backed herself against the counter and clambered over it. She breathed deep, letting the burning pain drape itself over her right arm as the adrenaline left her system.

"Drop the knife," she called to the man. He complied, unsheathing a black, serrated knife from his shoulder holster, before letting it fall onto the rotted wood.

"Ma'am, I –" he said, but she cut him off.

"Shut it," she said. "I'm talking here. Who sent you?"

The man rolled his eyes. _Really_.

"No one sent me, ma'am," he said.

"That's a load of viper shit," she barked. "Only ADVENT knows what _this_ –" she held up the photo with the emblem "– is."

"ADVENT isn't the only one who knows what EXALT is, Claymore," the man said.

Claymore's eyes narrowed. "So what, you read my mind. Think that scares me?"

"No. But now I know I've found the right person." The man chuckled, low waves of pleasant sound rising from his chest.

"It's funny. This isn't the first time we've been in this situation," he continued.

"What are you going on about?"

"Well," the man paused, taking his sweet time, maybe for suspense. "Does the word 'Portent' ring a bell to you?"

Claymore felt her left eye twitch, while the furrows in her cheeks deepened. Jesus Fucking Christ.

"I don't know what the fuck you're talking about," Claymore said.

The man began to walk forward. "You called me a 'boyscout', if I remember correctly, operator Claymore. Said if I got anywhere near you, you'd bite my fingers off. Had the gall to call my associate a 'Nazi bitch', too."

Claymore dropped her pistol. She had to be high off the elerium again. Nothing this unreal could be happening. Only in cheesy films and insane drug trips would someone, someone you thought dead for two decades, just walk back into your life.

"Jesus H. Christ," she muttered. "Of all the places to see you again, Sweaters."

The man smiled. "It's been a long time since that convoy raid twenty years ago, but I think you remember my name."  
Claymore slumped against the bar, sliding the mag pistol away like a glass of scotch.

"John fuckin' Bradford," she answered. "Yeah, I remember you."

* * *

After several minutes of waiting, with no bartender in sight, Claymored had decided to take the task of hospitality into her own hands. Standing in what was apparently a kitchen, she rummaged through a mud spattered cooler, slick with rainwater, and came up with two bottles of draft beer.

"On the house, Sweaters" she said to Bradford. She slid one bottle over to him, its moist surface leaving a trail of brown blots across the wooden countertop.

Bradford shook his head. "Thanks, but I'm –"

"Just fucking drink it," she ordered.

Bradford shrugged, and uncapped the beer. He withdrew his hand, and then, amazingly, downed half his beer with one gulp.

"I've had practice," he explained to a slightly bewildered Claymore.

"Uh huh," Claymore replied, sipping weakly at her own drink. The beer didn't sit well with the elerium slop rotting in her stomach acid, so she put down the bottle. "Alright, to business," she said. "First of all – why'd you come looking for me, Sweaters?"

"Well," Bradford said. "I need someone. Specifically, someone I can trust."

"Sounds illegal," Claymore said. "You're in the smuggling business?"

"Actually, the Resistance business," Bradford admitted.

Claymore sighed, exasperated. "You've gotta be kidding me."

Bradford shook his head. "You could say that quitting is not high on my list of priorities.

"Don't worry, either," he said, in a tone that basically said "be-very-worried". "We've got everything ready. We're only short on manpower. That's where you come in."

Claymore took another sip of her beer. "Do you need me that badly? I doubt an EXALT grunt was your first choice."

"The recruiting job needs someone with your… expertise," Bradford said. "I'm also looking for people to help me run this thing."

"You had at least two other folks working with you," Claymore pointed out. "Like the Nazi."

" _Vahlen_ ," Bradford said, with clear distaste in his voice, "disappeared after XCOM went under. No idea where she is, or what she's doing."

"Oh." Claymore said. Too bad. But XCOM's resident mad scientist had creeped the hell out of her, so Claymore assumed her diluted reaction was out of whatever misguided remnant of human sympathy was still left inside her.

She ventured another question. "Well, what about egghead?"

Bradford's next answer was more definitive.

"Dead," he said, dropping the word like a sack of bricks.

"Wow," Claymore replied, a bit more dumbfounded this time. "I mean… Jesus…"

Bradford nodded.

Claymore raised her bottle, and this time the sadness was real. Despite her position as a captive, XCOM's chief engineer at the time had been really, really damn nice to her. She always remembered him (in those rare moments when she had the coherency to remember her old life) with some measure of fondness.

"To egghead," she declared.

Bradford rapped his glass against hers. "To Raymond Shen."

They both sipped and sat back.

"Fuck," Claymore said, feeling exhausted all of a sudden. "Do you have _anyone_ left?" she blurted out.

"We have Shen's kid," Bradford said. "She's good with a wrench, but that's about it."

"She's not good with people?" Claymore asked.

"You bet," Bradford said.

Claymore pressed a hand against her temple. It was a bit much. Although her time at XCOM had been brief (and much of it spent in a spacious, well-furnished cell within its underground headquarters), she still had enough time to learn about her captors. Vahlen, again, was one creepy bitch, but at least she and Claymore had agreed on certain scientific ideals. And Shen had been way too hospitable, what with her being a domestic terrorist and all. Sure, enhanced interrogation from Council operatives wasn't the definition of five-star hospitality, but the staff at XCOM had ensured she'd be treated like a human being instead of one of those bobble-headed grey freaks.

There was one person that did come to Claymore's mind. A bit of a hard ass when it came to warfare, but by no means a heartless bastard.

"What about the one running your whole operation 20 years ago?" she asked. "She with you?"

Bradford bit his lip and sank lower against the bar.

"Dead too?" Claymore ventured.

Bradford started to chew at his lower lip.

"Maybe," was all he said. "We lost contact with her too after the invasion. I have my suspicions, but all you have to know is that she's the reason I'm looking for you."

"Woah," Claymore sputtered. "Just one goddamn second. Are you saying that you're trying to make me, an ex-EXALT operative, the commander of your little Resistance too?!"

"No!" Bradford stood up, as if he'd been electrocuted. "God no!"

Claymore breathed out in exaggerated relief. "Good."

Bradford nodded. "Yeah. This job, it's related to the Commander."

He reached into his pocket while saying that, and withdrew a small, green tablet with a hexagon screensaver. It pulsed as he tapped a finger against the screen, revealing the schematics of a building.

"Damn it, Sweaters," Claymore said. "I can't see shit."

"Sorry," Bradford apologized, flicking his finger across the screen and raising the brightness. "Force of habit from my… current living conditions."

"I can only imagine," Claymore muttered under her breath.

"Anyways," Bradford said. "We have reason to believe that the Commander was abducted," Bradford explained. "And taken here." Bradford tapped another finger, highlighting a room hidden deep in the simulated facility.

"That looks like a gene clinic," Claymore said. "Pretty unusual place for a political prison."

"We thought so too," Bradford said. "But it has abnormally tight security." Another flick of his wrist caused several video feeds to pop up onscreen. Claymore's stomach tightened as she saw ADVENT's peacekeeping forces, their emotionless, black visages staring at her from the screen.

"There are at least five squads guarding this building, and then some," Bradford continued. "Very excessive for just one gene clinic."

"And you want to assault this building," Claymore said. "But you don't have enough cannon fodder to do it."

Bradford frowned. "Volunteers, Claymore."

"Bullshit, Sweaters" Claymore said. "Anyone who's mad enough to try this is going to wind up dead."

"Maybe," Bradford replied. "Which is why I need you. You know the land better than anyone else in XCOM right now. You've probably met a few characters who are willing to join our cause."

"Yeah," Claymore said. "But I'm not really willing to hijack people and send them to their deaths like those sleazebags at EXALT did."

"This _will_ succeed," Bradford pushed, a hard edge to his words. "We've spent months amassing resources and drawing up a plan. People _will_ die, but they will not die in vain."  
"Then can I be privy to the details of this oh-so-wonderful plan, Sweaters?" Claymore asked. "You seem very sure that it'll work."

Bradford chuckled, and did a mock show of looking around the empty bar. "I'm not exactly eager to share classified information this early," he said. "The only details you need to know are that you have three weeks to get a sizeable strike force.

"Right," Claymore said. "And I need to get how many poor fools roped into this?"

"Around ten," Bradford said. "But that's only for the initial operation. We're going to need to expand and maintain our fighting force after this."

"You sound like you're in it for the long haul, Sweaters," Claymore said.

"Very much so," Bradford said. "It's going to be a massive commitment. Are you ready for that?"

Claymore snorted. "What a change of pace compared to my twenty years spent getting drunk and inhaling elerium powder."

"Seems like luxury," Bradford commented.

"It is. To being shot at," Claymore retorted. "So, my biggest concern is this – what do _I_ get out of this?"

"The honor of defending the freedom and safety of other human beings?"

"I'm ex-EXALT, Sweaters. I already know what that bull means."

Bradford grinned.

"I'm just kidding you. But, how does good food, warm water, electricity, and a fully stocked bar sound to you?"

"Sounds too good to be true," Claymore said casually, but she licked her dried lips all the same. She could just feel the warm air circulating and rushing across her dirt-caked skin, along with the taste of a prewar vintage that had been made in a vineyard rather than in someone's basement.

Compared to snorting radioactive powder and slogging across miles of wasteland, that seemed like heaven.

"Well, Sweaters," Claymore said, sighing. "I'm gonna die soon, some time or another. Going out comfortable ain't too bad."

Bradford stood and extended a hand to her. "Welcome to XCOM then, Claymore."

Claymore wrapped her fingers around Bradford's calloused palm.

"It's a goddamn pleasure, Sweaters."


	2. Bumpy Ride

"I FUCKING HATE YOU, BARRY!" Petrov screamed for the umpteenth time in a row.

"What's to be mad about?" Barry teased from the front seat. "This is the most excitement I've had in my LIFE!"

Petrov squeezed the trigger of his machine gun, letting loose another barrage of bullets from the back of the pickup truck before replying.

"You fucking _seriou_ s?!" he shouted.

"Yeah!" Barry said, turning back and grinning maniacally at Petrov. "What's biting you? Sunburn?"

Petrov flipped the bird at Barry in response, while smashing another magazine into his rifle with his other hand. An amazing feat, if one were to be honest, but neither Petrov nor Barry felt like giving a crap about it at the time.

"I've had pink fuckin' skin since I was born," Petrov spat. "You think that's what's gotten on my fuckin' –"

Before Petrov could continue on his swear fest further, he suddenly threw himself to the pickup truck's floor. A few seconds later, a cluster of bullets passed through the space that the Russian's head had occupied earlier, resulting in the remnants of Petrov's halitosis-ridden breath being scattered along the air instead of his skull.

Barry cackled from the front of the pickup, and bashed the horn with his hand. The pickup croaked in response, adding more noise to the clusterfuck of noise surrounding them. A box, one of dozens crammed into the backside of the pickup, slipped free from its bindings and smashed against the wet grass. Packets of ADVENT-brand burger meat flew in all directions, spattering the side of the Hummer with unknown, scarlet juice.

" _BLIN_!" Petrov screamed again. "That was 10,000 motherfuckin' crowns!"

Barry thought up a witty (at least in his head) reply, but the sound of bullets ricocheting off the rusted sides of the pickup shut him up. Curious, the Ukrainian leaned his head back to see if their pursuers had caught up to them.

Uh huh. They definitely had.

Behind the dusty trails and exhaust of the pickup truck, three pursuit vehicles were clawing after them. Two were regular vehicles, packed to the brim with angry, gun-toting folks. The last was a monster of a jeep – an angular, jet-black road juggernaught, equipped with a machine gun turret and heavy armor plating.

Gunfire flashed from car windows and from the turret, pumping lead into the pickup and the immediate countryside. Petrov responded in kind, emptying his clip into the nearest car, a faded, yellow Volvo Buggy covered in barbed wire and mud. A headlight exploded from the barrage, but the men and women inside the car were undeterred.

As Petrov changed the magazine in his weapon once more, he heard a loud shouting. Leaning over the supply chest he was using as cover, he saw a man in a motorcycle helmet leaning out of the Buggy.

The guy was either drunk or really, really pissed off. Either way, it didn't matter. Petrov raised his machine gun and shot in the man's general direction.

The man suddenly went limp as several of the bullets found their mark, his rifle sliding from his gloved fingers and hitting the dirt. A few seconds later, his corpse was rolling out of sight.

That was one down. But it would only make the other twenty or so left even more determinted to take them down.

And as much as Petrov liked a good gunfight, he knew that he'd have to break out the big guns. The Barry guns, to be exact.

Petrov leaned over and tapped his Ukrainian friend's shoulder. When that didn't get a response, he smacked the man's pony-tailed head.

"Too many!" he shouted over the din. "It's your turn!"

Barry gave a wide grin in reply, his manic fury exposing his grimy molars and cavity-riddled incisors. He let go of the wheel, popped open the side door, and leaped into the back of the pickup. Petrov scooted around him, and took over the driver's seat.

Barry crouched in the back, and began to dig through the boxes.

"Where is it? Where is it?" he muttered, tossing packages aside with abandon in his search. After shoving a large, battered cardboard box off the pickup's rickety back, he cackled aloud. In his hands was a thick, black case with the words "DANGER: MILITARY HARDWARE" stamped on the front in Cyrilic.

Barry opened the clasps on the side of the case, and with the joy of a child on Christmas day, grasped the grenade launcher that sat snug inside. Inside the case sat three high yield fragmentation grenades, clutched in tiny compartments like Easter eggs.

Barry's face cracked into a euphoric gasp as he grabbed one of the grenades, and popped it into the grenade launcher. Without a wasted second, he then swiveled around and fired, falling flat on his back from the recoil.

A massive explosion sounded, and Barry rose just in time to see the fiery wreck of the black jeep, tumbling and rolling, bits and pieces of its carapace flaking off like dead skin.

The other vehicle turned back, doing an instant, whiplash U-turn with "fuck that" levels of intensity. The yellow Buggy stayed the course, firing with even greater intensity at the pickup. Barry grinned again. More fun.

Another pop and twist, and another grenade was flying, bouncing on the hood of the Buggy before it plopped through its broken windshield. Barry could see the driver juggling the grenade in her lap before it went off.

A massive plume of flame and smoke rose, and the now-roasted Buggy began to swerve and slow, its passengers having been finely cooked and dismembered.

Barry whooped, banging his foot against the floor of the pickup and raising his grenade launcher into the air.

"You're not fucking Rambo!" Petrov screamed. "Get the hell down here!"

Barry pouted, but he complied, putting his precious grenade launcher back into its case. He didn't worry about the single grenade he had left – it'd be easy to convince Petrov to buy more of them later.

Barry crawled back into the pickup, his body jittery with adrenaline. His fingers shook even more than usual, and he almost lost his grip. But at the last second, he managed to pull himself back together, and eventually he clambered into the passenger seat next to Petrov.

"How lovely," Barry simply said.

Petrov slammed a hand against the dashboard. "LOVELY?!" he screeched. "What the fuck is wrong with you?!"

Barry crossed his arms, put his feet up on the dash, and looked out the window into the sky. The large, unbroken expanse of pastel blue, dotted with wisps of cotton candy consistency and shape, was soothing compared to the enraged mass of muscle quivering next to him.

"That was the biggest town in Eurasia," Petrov groaned. "They weren't supposed to see us! But you – you blew up their _fucking_ fuel depot!"

"The owner was a mouthy guy," Barry said, nonchalant. "I had to."  
"Who gives a _shit_?" Petrov said. "Settlements all over Eurasia are gonna be looking for our goddamn faces – they'll fucking lynch us!"

Barry finally turned away from the window and stared at his partner for the first time.

"Fine. We move, then," Barry suggested.

"Where, you fucking _zadrota_?" Petrov shouted, before slamming his head against the steering wheel.

"God, my fucking _dyedooshka_ could've pulled this off," he moaned. "He was seventy, but at least he knew how to follow goddamn orders!"  
Barry placed a hand on his friend's shoulder, but he batted it away.

"No worries, Petrov," Barry said. "We'll talk to Mutt when we hit the safehouse. He's got it."

"He's got more brain in his pinkie than you have in that skull of yours," Petrov replied. "But I don't think he can get us out of this shitstain."

Still, Barry noticed the Russian's skin soften and smooth out, a sign that he was calming from the suggestion.

Petrov placed a meaty hand against his scalp and scratched it, causing a flurry of dead skin to crumple onto his seat.

"Need some sunscreen?" Barry said.

Petrov scowled, and socked Barry in the shoulder. "Cigarette, you cheeky bastard. Any in the back?"

Barry took a quick glance at the back. "Yeah."

"Well, where the fuck is it?"

"Somewhere between us and the town we just came from."

Petrov slammed his head against the steering wheel again, and started to scream.

* * *

When the pickup trundled towards the entrance of the overgrown bunker that Petrov and Barry called home, Barry noticed something odd.

First, there was some strange, helicopter thing planted right next to the bunker. Second, Petrov and Barry's boss, Mutt, was talking to some lady in a thick leather coat. Mutt never held conversation with anyone outside of their little group, unless he was dealing with something like a territory negotiation with another group.

But, to any watcher, the situation appeared normal. Mutt was looking pretty suave, wearing his jeans and a green button up shirt, with a pair of black shades nestled in the fringes of his dirt-speckled blond hair. Barry could even see Mutt's gold earrings, reflecting the rays of the late afternoon sun. Those were his babies, things he would never wear outside of the bunker.

Still, Barry didn't trust the stranger. She didn't seem like a local gangster, not with _that_ hunk of high-tech junk sitting in the damn backyard. In fact, from Barry's eyes the craft looked mighty familiar. Its blocky exterior, dark color scheme, and strange mode of propulsion – all seemed like hallmarks of a drop cruiser.

An ADVENT drop cruiser, perhaps?

Making up his mind, Barry grabbed Petrov's rifle from the trunk and kicked open the pickup's door.

"Hands up, _zhenshchina_!" Barry shouted, aiming his rifle in the woman's general direction. The woman looked up in surprise, but she froze, making no attempt to move or raiser her hands.

Barry thought her a smart woman, maximizing her chances of survival. However, Barry realized why she wasn't making any attempt to escape when he felt something cold pressed against his head.

"Drop it," said a digitally-filtered voice. Barry obeyed instantly, his arms going limp and dropping the rifle. He could feel a bit of nervous, adrenaline-fueled sweat bunching up on his brow.

"Want me to take him out?" the voice called out from behind him, apparently to the woman he had just been holding up. "We don't need all of them, do we?"

Barry's teeth began to chatter as he heard the slide of a pistol being racked.

But, before the inevitable could happen, Barry heard a familiar, throaty cry rise from behind him.

"BARRY!" Petrov yelled, storming onto the scene. "DON'T YOU FUCKING PAY ATTENTION TO _ANYTHING_?"

"Wha-?" Barry replied, still facing forward thanks to the pistol pressing against the back of his head.

"You didn't know?!" Petrov said. "You didn't – didn't fucking _know_ this was happening? I fucking had a conversation, on radio, with Mutt right in front of your goddamn nose, and you didn't fucking _notice_?!"

Mutt walked over, grinning. "Woah, boys," he said in his smooth Cockney accent. "S'alright. No harm's been done. Firebrand, you can let 'im go."

The stranger behind Barry, likely Firebrand, put the gun away. Barry let out a sigh of relief, and fell to his knees.

Mutt walked over to him, flashed him a grin that was both pitying and caring, and lifted him off the ground.

"That the 'family greeting'?" the woman asked in the meanwhile, seemingly unfazed at having been held at gunpoint.

"Eh. Most of the time," Mutt confessed, patting Barry on the shoulder before letting him stand up. "Apologies for my boys, by the way. We don't get many visitors out here."

"No need," the woman said. "Firebrand would've made sure I stayed alive regardless."

"Yep," said that chilling, digitally altered voice. "Only difference would be that we'd have one less man standing around."

Barry turned towards the speaker and saw Firebrand, another woman, staring back at him. She made a creepy sight, clad in black combat webbing and an equally dark helmet with a silver visor. Instinctively, Barry found his eyes going to Firebrand's eye, where a large, nasty looking revolver lay in its holster, like a sleeping bear.

Responding to the other woman's words, Firebrand brandished this gun in front of Barry, spinning it around a few times before letting it rest in its holster once more.

"Alright, we fuckin' get it," Petrov said, crossing his thick arms. "You don't mess with us, we don't mess with you. Message re-fucking-ceived. But, lemme ask, what the _fuck_ is going on?"

Mutt clapped his hands together. "Boys, I must introduce you to an old friend of mine. The _fabulous_ Miss Claymore!"

With flourish, Mutt posed himself to frame the woman with his lithe body, making her out like some kind of superstar. Claymore responded by twitching her upper lip into an amused grin.

Spinning, Mutt then gestured towards the helmeted woman with an open palm. "And, her illustrious chauffeur, Firebrand."

"'Yello," she said. As if to accentuate this frightening veneer of normality, she then waved at Barry. Barry, justifiably spooked, took a few steps away from Firebrand.

Petrov cocked his head towards Mutt. "So… They're buyers?"

Mutt folded his hands together and looked upward, thinking. "Something of that sort," he said. "They came looking for some manpower."

"This some kind of merc job?" Barry asked.

Mutt shook his head, his earings jangling against his tanned skin.

"Nah. We've been hired permanently."

Barry frowned. "What kinda job is _this_? I thought we were always better off by ourselves."

Hearing that, Petrov began to growl.

"Usually," Barry quickly added.

Mutt smiled again. "Nah, nah, boys. This is a _good_ deal. Not only did we get paid a hefty sum in supplies, but we're also getting free room and board on a goddamn space-ship!"

Petrov sighed and stared at Mutt. "Boss, you gone crazy again?"

"He's not wrong," Claymore said. "The man I'm working for did manage to jack an alien cargo ship – somehow."

Petrov snorted. "Why the hell would he go and do that?"

"A _revolution_ ," Mutt said. He raised his hands in rapturous euphoria and echoed the word with sincere reverence. "This guy's itchin' to fight the good fight, an' he needs people to do it!"

With impossible speed, Mutt dived between Petrov and Barry and wrapped his arms around them. "People like you an' me, boys!"

Barry grinned at Petrov. "Looks like Mutt came through after all, huh?" he whispered, more than a little amused to see the bulky Russian proven wrong.

"Shut the fuck up," Petrov muttered back. He looked down at Mutt. "This revolution," he said. "Who's he fighting?"

"ADVENT," Mutt said. "Who else?"

In an instant, Petrov had unhooked himself from Mutt's grasp, edging towards the supply-laden pickup truck.

"What's wrong?" said Claymore, her eyes fixed on Petrov's receding figure. "Not feeling up to it?"

"It sounds like a real nice way to die, _zhenshchina_ , " he said. "I'll take my chances elsewhere."

"Now hold on," Mutt called, striding towards Petrov. "This is a pretty cushy deal I got us!"

"No offense, Mutt," Petrov said. "But you're fuckin' crazy, like Barry, 'kay? We all know, you go against ADVENT, you get your _zhopa_ nailed to a wall."

"Petrov, we got nowhere else to go!" Barry protested. "You said it yourself!"

"Shut it, Barry," Petrov warned. "I'd take my chances with the settlements instead of ADVENT."

"Settlements, ADVENT, what the hell's the difference?" Barry said. "Think killing ADVENT soldiers'll be harder than blowing the fuck out of the three cars chasing us today? Hell, it might be fun!"

"Wait, just what the bloody hell were you two doing out there?" Mutt interjected.

"That's 'cause you're a motherfucking psycho, Barry!" Petrov shouted. "I'm not interested in fighting!" He placed a hand on the pickup's door, his fingers brushing the handle.

"Petrov, come on, you know me," Barry said. "It ain't just the killing I like – there's other opportunities too! We could fix this fucked up world! Y'know?"

"What?!" Petrov replied, incredulous. " _You_ – You think a bunch of _cykas_ – you and me, are going to do what the entire fucking military couldn't do?" He glanced at the others and shook his head. "You hear this fucking lunatic?"

"You'd rather run, Petrov?" Barry said. "You wanna keep running, and fighting for scraps and whatever shit ADVENT throws at you? This is our chance to live like _real_ human beings. What the hell is the use of freedom when you can't fucking _enjoy_ it?"

"What do you know about freedom?" Petrov shot back. "The only thing you give a shit about is getting your explosives fetish!"

"I know what the fuck I'm talking about," Barry said, stepping right up to the Russian's enormous six-foot frame. "I lived in Ukraine during the Annexation. I know what the fucking _difference_ is between freedom and wasting your goddamn life!

"You run now, you might as well hammer a bullet in your skull while you're at it," he said, pressing two fingers against his temple.

Petrov wrapped his fingers around Barry's raised hand. Barry clenched his teeth, feeling what little muscle he had rubbing against his bones.

"I know you didn't have it easy either," Barry continued. "I know what it was like for the Russians living on the border during the Annexation. What do you think your family wanted that winter, huh?"

"You don't," Petrov breathed, his chest tightening in anger. "You don't have the fucking right –"

"Your _dyedooshka,_ Petrov!" Barry shouted back. "You think he wanted to live in the goddamn snow, kissing up to soldiers for a few pieces of coal? You don't think he wanted an opportunity to live normally, even for one fuckin' day?"

Petrov let go of Barry's hand, surging forward and punching his friend in the chest. The skinny Ukrainian stumbled backward, but didn't falter.

"Your mama, your little brothers!" Barry was practically spitting in Petrov's face at this point. "Living in what your leaders told you was 'true freedom', right? Sure, freedom to starve – freedom to rot in the goddamn gutters!"

"Stop – "

Barry stuck a finger in Petrov's face. "That what you want? Take the pickup and keep driving 'till someone finds your bones on some shitty little highway in the asscrack of the Earth. Fine. But I'm making something else of my life. Something that'll make me say 'Holy shit, that was great' when I'm on my fuckin' deathbed. ' _Kay_?"

Barry then leaped backward, electric currents tingling in his bloodstream, his body bracing for the blows that he knew would come.

Nothing came. Petrov's face didn't harden into a scowl, nor did it explode into a roaring tornado of curses.

Instead, the Russian's face _broke_ , cracking in half to reveal the briefest glimpse of an emotion foreign to Petrov's granite features: grief. The jagged lines on his face sagged, dribbling down his cheeks and smoothing out the frame of his face.

Mutt jogged over, his face neutral in spite of it all. He walked past Barry and over to the Russian, before taking a few tentative steps and grasping his hand.

"Petrov, boy, are you –"

Instead of answering, Petrov took Mutt's hand and shoved it away, before climbing back to his feet. As he stood, Barry saw no tears, no soft, sensitive expression. He saw instead a new kind of resolve, pumping beneath the man's flaking, pink skin. Something that made Barry both excited and afraid at the same time.

"Fine," Petrov said at last, the word moving effortlessly from his mouth along with the breath he expelled.

"Let's pack our things, _Da_?"

* * *

Several minutes later, Petrov, Mutt, and Barry managed to pack what meager possessions they had, as well as the cache of stolen supplies in the pickup, into the Skyranger. Of course, given that the Skyranger wasn't the most spacious vehicle around, one can imagine how cramped the inside became as the group stuffed more and more boxes into it.

"Firebrand, we're ready to lift off," Claymore said, resting her legs on a makeshift futon she'd made out of a red cooler and a large plastic case filled with shotgun shells. "Crystal?"

"Clear," came Firebrand over the Skyranger's intercom. "Lifting off about… Now!"

Barry felt a shift in pressure, albeit an extremely small one, as the Skyranger lifted off into the air. After clearing the initial ascent, the craft began to move forward.

"Glad you fellas packed light," Claymore commented.

Barry gave her a thumbs up from behind a stack of small boxes he had in his lap.

"Barry," Petrov said, strapped into his own seat. "Why the fuck do you need this many boxes?"

Barry smacked the side of his burden with one hand, causing the stack to shiver like a wet cat.

"Maps," Barry said. "My whole collection's in here."

"You took… everything," Petrov said, eyebrows raised in disbelief.

"Barry's a resourceful one," commented Mutt. "I ain't surprised at all."

"I'm can't believe we didn't have to ditch anything," Claymore said. "This is a metric ton of crap."

"Well, we did," Barry said. He shrugged, causing his box pile to jitterbug once more.

"Like what?" Mutt asked. Next to him, Petrov, expecting the worst, groaned and cupped his head in his hands.

"No worries. Was only a small crate. Filled with all these tubes, stuffed with this white shit. Didn't look like medicine or food to me."  
"Don't tell me –" Petrov moaned.

"So I threw it out!" Barry said. "Nothing to worry about!"

The room was silent for a second.

"Barry, you fucking asswipe," Petrov moaned. Then, he snapped, stomping down and crushing a small cardboard box with his boot heel.

"I'LL FUCKING END YOU, YOU LITTLE SHIT!" Petrov screamed, straining against his seat belts.

Barry simply cackled in reply, causing his stack of boxes to shake with the intensity of a belly dancer.


	3. Pick and Choose

Throughout the next two weeks, Claymore crossed the length of the Eurasian and Oceanian landscape, racking her memory for interesting characters she'd come across, characters who'd fit the bill as resistance fighters. She followed rumors, traversed vast distances, and delved into the seediest of locations.

It wasn't always as simple as finding her mark, however. Some recruits turned her down. Some accepted. Some were so drunk, things got out of hand before she could stimulate their alcohol-addled brains into accepting her invitation.

In short, it was a clusterfuck of an adventure. One that could probably fill up a small novella.

So, instead of showing you the full thing, here's a highlight reel of those two weeks.

* * *

"I'm looking for Dr. Matilda Fournier."

The desk attendant, little more than a teenager with a five o'clock shadow, looked up from his tattered magazine. Claymore gave a polite wave.

"Uh," the attendant said. "I think Dr. Fournier's busy."

As if to accentuate that statement, a loud, guttural scream came from the door behind the attendant, followed by a round of swears, uttered in French.

"Yeah," the attendant said. "She's got an appointment."

Claymore pulled out her mag pistol and pressed it against the kid's forehead.

"I've just made mine," she said. "Now be a dear and let me in."

The teenager gulped, and scooted out of the way, hands raised. "S-sure," he stammered.

Claymore walked past him, and, once she was out of earshot, giggled. The kid hadn't been in any real danger – her gun had been empty. Knowing this simply made his terrified, pants-shitting expression even funnier to Claymore.

Getting that out of her system, Claymore walked into the operating room. Once inside, she took a step back and blinked. The light inside was really, really fucking intense – for a second, she thought someone had thrown a flash bang at her. It wouldn't be the first time.

When her eyesight came back, Claymore noticed the operating table. A man with a bushy, tangled beard was lying on the table, dressed in a hospital gown. The gown's sterile, blue color had faded a long time ago, replaced mostly by a mosaic of dried blood.

The table itself was also soaked in blood. Several lines of crimson fluid dragged down the side of the table, pooling on the white tiles below.

The patient himself was gasping like a dying fish. Appropriate, considering there was a goddamn _bonesaw_ sticking out of his thigh. The doctor, a slim, bald woman with pointed shoulders, leaned over him, dabbing the wound with an already gore-soaked rag.

"Claus, stay with me," the doctor told the big man. "I'm almost done."

The man grimaced, but he nodded.

The doctor straightened, and then suddenly, threw her weight against the bonesaw, pushing it further into the man's flesh. With a massive shove, the saw completed its journey, accompanied by a spurt of blood and another shriek of pain from the patient.

The doctor wiped a glove against her smock, and withdrew the bonesaw. Without even blinking, she tossed the blood-drenched object into a stainless steel sink.

Holy shit.

"I did tell you, Claus, that you should watch how long you spend hunting in the swamp," the doctor said, admonishing the man. "Those old rubber boots are no good at stopping gangrene. You're lucky I was able to save the rest of you. At the very least, I won't be seeing you in my operating room for some time, _oui_?"

Claus blurted out something in French. Then, his head lolled backward onto the operating table.

The doctor sighed, and withdrew a walkie-talkie from her uniform.

"Dante? Dante, yes, I need some help here stabilizing Claus… Yes, we've completed the operation. I just need someone to take care of the rest, right? Good."

The doctor cocked her head as she listened to a reply. "What? Someone did _what_ to Frederich? Who – "

The doctor turned, finally noticing that Claymore was standing at the entrance.

Claymore, not knowing what to do, waved.

The doctor, walkie-talkie still planted on the side of her head, looked up and down at her. Then, with viper-like speed, she lunged forward.

Claymore drew back, but felt something being plucked from her coat. Looking up, she saw, with a sinking feeling, that the doctor hadn't been trying to tackle her.

The doctor took a few steps back, Claymore's mag pistol clenched firmly in one blue latex glove. Without hesitation, she took aim at Claymore chest, and fired.

The gun clicked, empty.

Claymore grinned, but the doctor had no humor on her face. She threw the pistol at Claymore, and retreated around her comatose patient, heading for the exit.

"Wait, wait!" Claymore said, raising a hand. "Don't leave!"

Claymore rounded the table, closing in on the doctor, who was busy fumbling with the handle to the door. She was almost through.

"John Bradford!" Claymore blurted.

The doctor froze. She turned, her frantic attempts to leave all but forgotten. A seething, pissed off expression was plastered across her face.

"What." The doctor spat out the word. It hung between her and Claymore, humming in the air like a brain dead gnat.

"Yeah," Claymore said. "You know him?" She put on a friendly smile and scratched the back of her head. In short, giving off a casual, non-threatening appearance.

The doctor scowled, lips curling back to reveal a set of white teeth that pretty much gleamed with anger.

"What," she said, forcing the words out, "do you want to talk about?"

She was even angrier than Claymore had predicted. It was going to be an easier job than she thought.

"Let's just say I know where you can find a man with a green sweater," Claymore said. "Along with an organization that goes by the name 'XCOM'."

Claymore smiled as she saw the other woman's eyes light up, her stiffness breaking up into a sort of eager savagery.

* * *

Ah.

Claymore could never have imagined that Manchester air could smell this good. Ever since ADVENT implemented its Western European Revitalization Program, places like Manchester that had been deemed of "no strategic import" were downgraded, reduced to sparse suburban areas that bordered on total wilderness.

After reminiscing, Claymore looked at what was supposed to be her target's home: a quaint, cozy little house, at least two stories tall, with enough room to house at least seven people. Only one person lived in that house as of right now, though.

Claymore rapped a hand against the wooden door, its unbroken coat of white paint a testament to the owner's care for the property.

When no one answered, Claymore braced herself against the door and pushed. It opened with little resistance, and Claymore walked into a parlor room.

Yep, it was the same as before. The nooks and benches where guests and family usually sat were filled with all variety of garbage. Specifically, destroyed family photos. Broken frames, cracked open like rotten eggs, littered the white tiled floor and the red carpeting. Pictures, formerly filled with smiling men, women and children, gathered dust in various corners, having been burnt beyond all recognition.

Still, if her target wasn't in the house, there was only one other place she'd be…

Claymore continued walking, taking an impromptu tour throughout the rest of the house, which was completely immaculate. Every piece of furniture was free of dust, and Claymore could even smell pine freshener, lingering in the air and coating the inside of the house with its pleasant scent. Claymore half-expected the electricity to be on, with a TV blaring in the living room and a piece of roast beef burning in an oven.

Halfway through the house, Claymore jumped back at the sound of a gunshot. It was loud, and messy – definitely buckshot of some kind. Claymore hastened towards the source of the sound, walking passed the kitchen and out a backdoor into an overgrown backyard.

There, a small, bespectacled woman, probably of advanced age due to the streaks of gray in her hair, stood in the knee-high grass, wearing a t-shirt and military fatigue pants. In her tanned, wrinkled hands she held an old dual-barrel shotgun, its grimy barrel pointed at the other end of the yard.

Without hesitating, the old woman pulled the trigger. It spat fire and buckshot, shattering a large, ornate vase that sat, hidden in the grass.

Even as the vase shattered, its various, dismembered bits flying in different directions into the depths of the backyard, the old woman was reloading, snapping back the stock of her gun and releasing two spent shotgun shells.

"Mrs. Sycamore!" Claymore called from the porch.

The old woman stopped midway through her reloading process, and turned, letting the shotgun's barrel slump forward ahead of her. She saw Claymore, blinked, and then rubbed her wrinkled eyelids with one hand.

"My word," the old woman said. "Is that you, Claymore?"

She threw down the shotgun, and wiped her hands against her pants. "Goodness me!" she cried. "You've caught me at an inopportune moment, Claymore dear."

The old woman walked over to the porch and up to Claymore, her diminutive, smiling face only coming up to the other woman's neck.

Gesturing with one hand, Mrs. Sycamore said: "Come in, Claymore! Just give me a minute to get ready, and I'll have some tea ready, right quick!"

Minutes later, Claymore was sitting at a small table on the porch, watching the brilliant rays of the sun slide behind white picket fence that surrounded Mrs. Sycamore's home. A cup of tea, swishing around in a dainty mug decorated with rocket ships and baseballs, sat in front of her.

Claymore took a sip and sighed. It tasted good, damn good, but it wasn't strong enough to tackle the itch that tingled throughout her body.

That itch for elerium.

With a swift hand, Claymore took out a small ziplock pouch from her jacket, and sprinkled a pinch of that heavenly, alien goodness into her cup. One swig later, and Claymore's mind _and_ body were sated.

Mrs. Sycamore twitched her nose, not out of disgust for Claymore's habit, but because she hated wasting pure, good tea.

"Nice cup," Claymore commented, hooking a finger through the teacup's handle. "Who's is it?"

"My grandson's," Mrs. Sycamore said, before taking a sip from her own teacup, which was a collage of pink polka dots and unicorns. "Shall I clean up?"  
Claymore nodded, and handed the old English woman her teacup.

Mrs. Sycamore squinted, taking aim. Then, she let fly, her wiry, lithe arm launching the tiny blue teacup into the air, before it smashed against the white fence. Blue shards fell like oversized raindrops into the grass.

Without missing a beat, she hurled the second cup. The smiling unicorns and polka dots spun in a furious whirl, hitting the fence with enough force to send one of the pieces of pink porcelain flying to the fucking moon.

Mrs. Sycamore stretched her arms, and then sat back into her chair, a warm smile on her face.

"That's your therapy?" Claymore asked.

"It's quite effective," Mrs. Sycamore said. "At least until I run out of knick-knacks to smash."

Mrs. Sycamore adjusted her glasses, and leaned over towards Claymore. "So," she said. "Why'd you come all the way out here, Claymore dear? A young woman like yourself doesn't make her way out to this lonely corner of God's Green Earth just to keep an old woman company."

Claymore smiled, and gave Mrs. Sycamore her proposition. Pretty soon, Mrs. Sycamore was smiling as well.

* * *

"And stay the fuck out!" yelled the bouncer, as Claymore sailed out the door and into the rainy Hong Kong night. The ex-EXALT operative went flying, before landing flat against the rain soaked pavement.

The door closed behind her, leaving Claymore sprawled and fully soaked. She got to her feet, patting herself down to make sure she had everything. She tapped her fingers against her jacket pocket, and sighed with relief that it was still there. Then, her eyes met with the rain, and something clicked. In fear, she began to tear open the jacket pouch.

Out came the ziplock baggie, only this time it was wet and dripping. Great droplets of water slid from the bag's wet plastic surface, revealing the grey, solidifying mush that was the Claymore's elerium stash.

Claymore threw the baggie down the street, watching it splatter against the asphalt. She wouldn't be able to get high off any of _that_ shit.

"Fucking Triads," she muttered. Turning to the door, she shouted: "Fuck you too, Zhang!"

She grumbled a bit more, and then walked off. She needed someplace warm to go before she could rendezvous with Firebrand again. Plus, the Hong Kong air wasn't exactly the best thing to breathe, even after 20 years of ecological reorganization from the East Asian ADVENT Administration.

She hit Hong Kong's main street relatively quickly, turning a corner to be greeted by a barrage of neon lights, holographic displays, and cars blurring by at several hundred miles per hour. The crowds present here provided some measure of comfort, since the number of umbrellas the people carried were more than enough to cover everyone from the rain. But it was still a crowd, and Claymore felt she might suffocate in the sea of yellow rain coats if she stayed any longer.

Glancing around, Claymore noticed a door propped open, revealing the dry, inviting insides of the building. Without a second thought, she stepped across its threshold.

Instantly, the sounds of car exhaust, pounding rain, and grumbling Chinese workers were replaced by synthetic pop beats and laughter. Before Claymore could register where she was, a hand grabbed her wrist and pulled her deeper inside the building.

She was escorted down a darkened hallway, before emerging out the other side into a large room, blazing with multi-colored light. Loudspeakers pounded furiously into the ether, spitting out rapid-fire lyrics to some Chinese pop song while dozens of people shook and danced in the center.

Claymore blinked a few times, and then found herself being shoved onto a red couch.

" _Ni hao_ , _gweilo_ ," said her would-be "kidnapper". Claymore looked up and saw a scantily clad Chinese woman leering down at her, a snakelike grin on her lips. Things felt surreal, but it wasn't because of the unusual and uncomfortable situation that Claymore found herself in. Rather, it was the two items on the woman's head that made Claymore question her sanity.

She saw fucking _cat ears_ poking out of the woman's black hair.

The woman laid one finger, the nail slathered in deep, red gloss, against Claymore's shoulder.

"Tired, huh?" she said in broken English. "No worry. I make you feel all right, eh?"

Claymore blushed a bit, which prompted the woman to lean in closer and whisper more sweet nothings.

But those goddamn _ears_. Claymore saw them twitch and move on top of the woman's head, like they were some kind of living antennae. Jesus Christ, she thought. What the _fuck_ were the city folk doing nowadays?

Completely repulsed, Claymore sat up and pushed away her.

"Sorry," she said. "Uh, no thank you?" Without waiting for a reply from the blue-balled woman, Claymore decided she was already dry enough, and began to walk towards the exit.

On the way, Claymore got a better look at her surroundings. This seemed to be one of those "Advent-sanctioned clubs" that had cropped up in recent years. Bright, neon signs stamped with the ADVENT logo loomed down from the ceiling, as if the administration itself were supervising the patrons of the club. Dozens of people, ranging from common workers to low-level government officials, flocked about the dance floor, laughing, drinking, kissing, and grinding. Dispersed about this crowd were dancers like the one that had molested Claymore earlier, walking about with all manner of animal features genetically grafted to their bodies.

Despite its seal of approval, the club was just as raunchy, if not more so, as the illegal establishments the administration had shut down twenty years ago. Claymore felt like she'd received front row tickets to the biggest orgy in human history.

A sick feeling slithered in her stomach when she realized this might be the future of her species – glorified pack animals, spending their days eating, drinking, and fucking.

Claymore couldn't stand it a second more. She would, in all honesty, face a nest of psychotic, drug-addled bandits rather than spend more time in this literal fuckfest.

Claymore opened the door to the club's entrance, and walked once more down the dimly lit hallway. But this time, she heard something odd. There was a banging sound. It wasn't from the club. It was coming from further down the hallway, near the tiny entrance she had first been dragged through.

Pressing her head to the walls, Claymore slowed her pace, moving step by step until she found an adjoining passage that led to some other part of the building. The banging got stronger, followed by what appeared to be an argument in some Chinese dialect.

Soon, Claymore reached the end of the passageway, marked by a pair of large, grimy doors, with small, vertical windows installed in them. Claymore crouched near one and looked inside.

A young Chinese woman, dressed in a ratty hoodie and faded jeans, was being restrained by two Advent troopers. She was giving them a hell of a time, wriggling and shaking, twisting the troopers' arms into uncomfortable positions. Meanwhile, some skinny, pony-tailed guy in a black suit stood, watching the whole scene.

To Claymore, the man didn't seem agitated one bit, judging from his relaxed posture and the cigarette sticking out of his mouth. His back was to her, allowing her to catch sight of a rectangular object tucked inside his back pocket.

While Claymore was still trying to comprehend what the hell was happening, one of the troopers barked a few words in Chinese before smacking the girl across the head. She went limp, her only motion being the inconsistent, slow rise and fall of her chest.

The suit barely noticed, stopping only to let out a foul exhalation of smoke.

Whatever was going on, Claymore knew it wouldn't end well for the girl. She felt for the girl, she really did. Being helpless, trussed up like a fly in ADVENT's enormous web, was a shit experience beyond compare. But Claymore knew her own importance, and knew that she couldn't compromise her mission over some random girl.

Apparently, though, said girl hadn't run out of options. She buzzed to life like some Frankenstein beast, and twisted, smashing her elbow against one of her captors' faceplates.

A loud crunch was heard, and blood began to dribble out of the Advent trooper's exposed mouth. The trooper's gloved hands raced up to contend with his injuries, leaving the girl's right arm entirely free.

Without hesitation, the girl then threw her free arm at the other Advent trooper. The trooper, in response, turned her head, letting the girl's knuckles slam against her helmet with a hollow thwacking sound. Cocking her head back again, the trooper grabbed the girl's left arm in one hand, and kicked upward, driving her plated knee into the girl's stomach.

The girl fell limp again, pushing ragged breath through her mouth. The trooper was far from over, however. A fist collided against the girl's face, cracking her head to the side. A wad of blood flew from her mouth in a vibrant, crimson arc, before splattering into the divots on the tiled floor.

The suit raised a hand at the trooper.

"No," he said, his broken English cushioned in a heavy Chinese accent. "Don't hurt merchandise."

Claymore's nostrils flared. That was it.

In one smooth stride, Claymore kicked the door open. She stopped for a mere second to pistol whip the suit in the back of the head with her mag pistol, causing him to slam against the concrete floor. In another second, Claymore had adjusted her gun, before turning and pumping a single magnetic round into each of the Advent troopers. They both fell back, propelled by the rounds, before falling against the tiles.

The girl jumped back, falling and scooting away from Claymore. She stammered in some Chinese dialect, repeating " _Gau mehng a!_ " in a wavering, high-pitched tone.

Claymore held up a hand.

"Stop! I won't hurt you," she said. She took a few, slow steps forward, before crouching in front of the girl. "Are you okay?"

The girl's eyes widened.

"H-help," she croaked. "Please."

Before Claymore could respond, a sudden chattering caught her attention. She turned to see the pony-tailed Chinese suit yammering into a cellphone. Without thinking, she brought her hands around and snapped off a shot. The man flopped to the floor, while the top half of his scalp congealed on the wall behind him.

Claymore turned her head towards the girl. "He won't hurt you anymore," she reassured, before walking over to the body. She reached a hand around the corpse's backside, moving around a bit before withdrawing the square object she had seen in the man's pants earlier. It was a small stick, made from smooth black plastic. A white Advent logo pulsed in the center of the stick.

There were at least 500 creds stored in that credit stick, Claymore knew. She turned back, and got a good look at the girl she'd just rescued.

The girl stared at Claymore, her eyes still bulging from her sockets in fear. But that wasn't what Claymore was looking for.

There.

Sticking out like some kitschy Halloween costume, were those feline monoliths, sticking out from the girl's trimmed black hair. They marked her as one of the building's employees.

It made perfect goddamn sense now.

"I've got a ride out of here," Claymore told the girl. "Away from this place. Come with?"

The girl was still, like a deer in the headlights of a car. Her pale skin rendered her like some fanciful ice sculpture, rather than a frail, frightened person.

Finally, she nodded. A small, twitch of a nod, but a nod nonetheless.

* * *

The Skyranger's jets lit the night as the craft made its latest voyage from the industrial playground of East Asia into the vast tracts of undeveloped European landscape. On board, a single soul was carried, soon to join nine others in the bowels of the mechanical behemoth known as the Avenger. Like a lit match, this last person would serve as the catalyst, igniting the frayed wires of revolution and causing a rupture that would shake the foundations of ADVENT.


	4. Gatecrasher Pt 1

"So," Barry said, resting his bum against one of the Avenger's finely tailored barstools. "What're you all in for?"

Two people sat to his left: a Chinese man with a face like a Stalinist statue, and a bald woman with pursed, bloodless lips and hollow cheeks. Neither of them spoke.

"Want me to start?" Barry asked, filling the void. "'Aight. Name's Barry. Uh, that's two _r_ 's."

"Forget about 'em," said the man to Barry's right, Miguel. The slim, noodly Spaniard, Barry's newest friend, took a sip from his beer and flashed a yellowed grin at the Ukrainian. "They wanna act all fuddy duddy like that, they can. You got me around to keep you company."

Barry groaned. "As if you're better. I've already heard that shack story from you and your sister a thousand times!"

"Did she tell you how I ran over a whole platoon of Advent troopers in _La Llorona_?"

"More like she shot them, and then you ran over the corpses," Barry retorted. He scarfed down the rest of his beer, and sank to the table, a mellow grin rising from his rugged features. His eyes shot upward, shooting seductive gazes at the several hundred bottles that sat on the shelves above him. The gleam of those bottles, reflecting the ship's fluorescent lights, made it seem like they were teasing him, catcalling and tugging at their wrappers, giving him a glimpse of the luscious liquid within their glass confines. Barry didn't even know that so many brands of alcohol existed. The bottles he was used to drinking were plastic, covered in grime and torn bits of paper. The bottles that danced just above his drunken head were made from fine, amber glass, their labels a colorful array of purples, yellows, greens, and pinks.

Hell, the bar was only the best part about this ship, the Avenger. Barry remembered swallowing a nervous lump when he had seen it, nestled between two canyon walls. It was several tons of shiny ass alien alloy, with four massive VTOL-jets flanking its sides.

The inside, though. Mother of Mary, the inside was fucking _beautiful_. Sterile hallways filled with a blissful mixture of bright light and clean air. Spacious rooms that actually had four walls and a ceiling. A goddamn pool room. Even Petrov, stoic to the end, had admitted " _Da_ , it was a good setup."

The staff wasn't too bad either. Barry had assumed they'd be a bunch of swanky know-it-alls, members of the earth's upper crust who would be popping at the seams with revolutionary slogans, complex ideologies and philosophies, and extremely complex words with multiple syllables.

Far fucking from it. XCOM's acting commander, John Bradford, was certifiably awesome. He endorsed a loose dress code, condoned pretty much any behavior short of treason, and had the _yaichko_ to drink and party with the grunts. That set Bradford apart from every other authority figure Barry had in his life – a pretty tremendous feat.

The other soldiers were a fine lot too, aside from the two inanimate meat sacks next to him.

Miguel stood up, sliding his beer bottle across the counter. It clattered next to the dozen or so other empty bottles that awaited disposal.

"Where're you heading?" Barry asked. "Going to polish your motorcycle helmet collection?"

Miguel turned red. "What's it to you?"

"Dunno," Barry replied. "Kinda dumb to take care of twenty helmets when your crappy Harley got trashed years ago."

Miguel frowned, his mouth curling into a crooked, disgusted squiggle. "Don't you talk shit about _La Llorana_!" he warned. "She gave her life for me and _mi hermana_!" He shook his head. "Don't do any good to talk down about the dead."

"It's a fucking motorcycle," Barry said. "Not your goddamn mother."

Miguel's face took on a red hue. He opened his mouth, and then snapped it shut, figuring it wouldn't be worth the trouble. Instead, he stomped out of the bar.

"This has to be a joke."

Barry looked around, and saw that the burly Chinese guy had finally spoken up.

"Huh?" he said.

The Chinese man had barely moved. Instead, he was looking at Barry from the corner of his eye, as if he was some kind of ugly-ass bug crawling out from under the floor tiles. The man's hazel irises regarded Barry with a mixture of curiosity and disgust. Nevermind, just disgust.

"I said, this had to be a joke," the man said, taking the time to enunciate his words, like a particularly racist billionaire talking to his foreign hired help. "I thought an organization like XCOM had… higher recruiting standards," he continued.

"Oh, oh _sure_ ," Barry said, humoring the other man. "Miguel, yeah, dunno how he was able to get his ass on this ship. But you're looking at grade-A material right here, _drook_!" Barry patted a hand against his emaciated rib cage.

The man frowned, and put a hand against his forehead.

"Just great," he muttered. "34 years of my life spent in the Security Ministry. Now here I am, drinking with lowlifes."  
"Just 'cause we're lowlifes doesn't mean we don't have grit," Barry shot back. "We can use a gun. Nothing else to this business."

The man's eyes widened, and he turned his face around entirely, revealing the rest of his spartan features. The only prominent detail on his face was a large, pink scar, running down the side of his head.

"I have planned operations on a grander scale than this," he said, soft and slow. "I have taken compounds without firing a single shot. Can I expect any more from a piece of wasteland shit like you?"

"Who the fuck needs plans?" Barry spat back. "You go in, get what you can, and get out. And you shoot any fucker who gets in your way."

The man crossed his arms. "Cocky, aren't you?"

"I got good reason to be," Barry replied.

The man grinned in response, only it wasn't a jovial "let's be friends" kind of grin. It was a grin that a snake would give to a field mouse.

"You see those?" he said, pointing a thumb at the wall. Barry followed the calloused digit, and found himself staring at dozens of steel picture frames, each one empty.

"Yeah," Barry said. "What, you put pictures of your sister there?"

"That's the Memorial Wall," the man said, letting the words sink in. "That's where they put cocky sons of bitches."

Suddenly, he lunged forward, grabbing Barry's shoulder and squeezing it with surprising force.

"If you cross me, or compromise the mission, I will put your picture in one of those frames myself. Got that?" he said, digging his fingers deeper into the Ukrainian's shoulder with each word.

"Mmhmm," Barry muttered, before spitting in the man's face. The brown projectile raced out of his lips, making a beeline for the Chinese man's face.

Incredibly, the man _dodged._ In the milliseconds it took for that condensed ball of enzymes to travel between the two men, the Chinese guy had twisted his head back, letting the saliva arc over his shoulder and land on the floor with a pathetic splat.

Barry's gut also dropped towards the ground, a cold, shuddering feeling that conveyed this basic idea: He was fucked.

Before the reshaping of Barry's face could occur, a loud alarm sounded in the bar.

"Attention," announced a digitized, female voice. "All combat-capable XCOM operatives must head to the command center immediately. I repeat, all combat-capable XCOM operatives must head to the command center, immediately."

The voice cut out, replaced by unending drone of the klaxons.

The Chinese man snorted, and let go of Barry's shoulder.

"Duty calls," he told him, flashing a sarcastic smile. "I'll see you on the bridge."

* * *

Bradford looked up from the inactive holographic console, his arms extended across its metal edges. Around him, technicians and other noncombat personnel scuttled about, tapping at computers, or carrying important equipment.

He smiled, feeling warm. It had taken a while to get the Avenger to this level of professionalism, but it was worth it. Watching this orderly scene gave him a tingle of nostalgia, as if he was once again standing in the center of XCOM's old mission control.

Claymore walked up beside him, also surveying the Avenger's command center.

"Whew," she whistled. "You did a damn good job at setting up this place."

"Yep," Bradford said. "Can't have a revolution without an orderly work place."

The clatter of boots interrupted the conversation, causing Bradford to look ahead of him. Already, the first recruits had entered the command center, and judging from the green leather jackets and the decorative motorcycle helmets nestled under their arms, they were the Rivera twins.

Miguel flashed him a big smile, while his twin sister gave a polite wave. Bradford nodded back.

The majority of the recruits came in right after them, pushing and jostling about like high schoolers called to an assembly. The first three, Mutt, Petrov, and Barry bumbled through the doorway, with the scrawny figures of Mutt and Barry being buffeted forward by Petrov's enormous bulk. Following them were the elderly British woman and the Chinese dancer. They were a peculiar couple – the old woman had already taken to the girl, evidenced by her frail, wrinkled fingers wrapped around her partner's hand.

They were chatting with someone behind them, a lanky Canadian man in a sweater and beanie. That operative, Bradford knew, went by the street name "Banks", and had been living in the Eurasian area when XCOM had recruited him.

Bradford recalled that event with fondness. The 20-something graffiti artist had been convicted of vandalism a few weeks ago, just after his latest piece (an amusing caricature of an Advent official with a sectoid's hand rammed up his ass – really, quite a sight to behold). With the law hot on his trail, Banks had booked it, burgling a convenience store for provisions and sprinting out of the Megacity outskirts.

Out of dumb luck, his wild flight caused him to bungle into the Skyranger, on its way back from another of Claymore's recruiting trips. Banks probably assumed that, wherever this strange plane thing was going, it _had_ to be better than the back room of an Advent Rehabilitaiton Center.

Of course, with no way of actually getting on board the Skyranger, Banks's only option was to latch onto one of the Skyranger's landing struts and hold on for dear life. The image of that lanky guy, dangling several hundred feet in the air with a plastic bag filled with junk food swinging around his arms, made Bradford chuckle.

Five hours later, the engineer on refueling duty would be scared out of her wits, as she found XCOM's newest recruit sitting in the hangar, offering her a hot pocket that he'd roasted using one of the Skyranger's thrusters.

Based off the kid's expression, he was probably telling that story again. No other tale could make him so animated and excited.

The last of the operatives stepped through the door, his shoes treading lightly against the Avenger's hull. Bradford nodded at the imposing figure of Sún Shi, formerly Chinese black ops, and shot him a small salute. Shi returned it.

Shi had been Bradford's idea, although at this point he was unsure if he'd made the right choice. While Claymore had assured him of the other operatives' competence, a part of him had still yearned for some semblance of the military order that he'd been saturated in 20 years ago.

So, he had sifted through his old recruitment sheets, looking at digitally superimposed names that had once been printed, in neat, block letters. It took a few hours for him to find the name he was looking for, nestled in the middle of page 17, Section 6: East Asian recruits.

Shi was a good soldier, no doubt. He showed his superiors, and those whose skill was equal or greater to his, a great deal of respect. But, like Bradford, Shi was old-fashioned, crafted to fit in to extremely militaristic environments. He made no effort at hiding how much he detested working with unorthodox, civilian recruits.

"Is everyone here?" Bradford asked, looking to his left at Claymore.

The former EXALT shook her head. "We're missing Matilda."

Bradford gritted his teeth at the sound of that name. "Of course," he muttered.

There was a bit of silence after that, except for the chatter going on amongst the recruits at the other end of the room. A lump formed in Bradford's throat as he tried to bring up what was on his chest.

"You think she's…" he began, before choking on the rest of it.

Claymore waved away his concerns. "I explained it to her. She understands completely."

"You sure?" Bradford said.

"Definitely," Claymore reassured. "She's a rational-minded woman, Sweaters."

Bradford began to doubt that reasoning once the good doctor walked into the room. Dr. Matilda Fournier's face went from neutral to downright furious as soon as she caught sight of Bradford.

Bradford tugged at the neck of his uniform, and walked towards her.

"Er… Hello, Matil –"

The palm of the doctor's hand cut off the rest of Bradford's nervous greeting. A mercy considering that he actually had no idea of what to say besides the initial "Hello".

"Only my brother called me by my first name, John," Matilda replied.

"Of course," Bradford muttered, rubbing a hand against his reddening cheek. The room had gone totally silent, all eyes on the altercation occurring on the floor.

Matilda fixed her glare on Bradford, her cold, blue irises drilling into the central officer's head.

"I just want to make it clear," she said. "Things haven't changed between you and me. Tick me off and you'll see how good of a surgeon I am, _oui_?"

 _Mmhm_. Message received. Bradford nodded, pressing his teeth together in expectation of another blow.

Matilda, thankfully, turned away, walking stiffly back to the rest of the recruits.

Mutt looked at her, mouth agape, his eyes almost bugging out behind his shades. Now _there_ was a woman who could throw her weight around.

"Ma'am," he said, addressing the doctor. "Ya seem to be goin' through some rough times. If you're needin' someone to comfort ya –"

"Please, shut up," Matilda said.

Mutt recoiled. "Er, yes ma'am."

Barry, Petrov, and the old British woman burst out laughing. Mutt's cheeks turned bright red.

"Very funny, people," Bradford said. "If you're done enjoying today's show, we've got an important operation on our hands."

The laughter petered out, and ten pairs of eyes focused in on Bradford with pinpoint accuracy.

XCOM's central officer suddenly began to feel very, very nervous. Despite the small audience, their attention and serious demeanor made him realize the enormity of this operation. In old XCOM, the men and women he commanded knew the score. Fighting and dying was in the job description. But these people weren't soldiers. They were a mish mash of prostitutes, smugglers, and kindly grandmothers – in other words, civilian volunteers.

Claymore's words echoed in his head.

 _Bullshit, Sweaters. Anyone who's mad enough to try this is going to wind up dead._

Twenty years ago, when XCOM had the brightest minds in the scientific community, the best medical facilities and weapons that money could buy, and the backing of the world's most powerful nations, that would've been considered a highly pessimistic sentiment. Now that XCOM was a lone body, on the run from the same world it was made to defend, it was a grim reality.

Bradford swallowed back his doubts. It wasn't just the lives of his troops that were at stake, he reminded himself. It was the fate of their world, of their entire species.

"Glad I have your attention," he said at last. "But before I get into the details of today's op, I have an important question to ask you all. Does anyone know what day tomorrow is?"

Bradford grinned as he saw the ten faces in front of him curdle into scowls and frowns.

"That's right, people," he said. "Tomorrow's Unification Day."

"Fuck Unification Day!" cried Banks.

"Damn right!" roared Petrov, pumping a fist into the air. A few others in the crowd hooted and hollered along with him.

Bradford raised his hands, and the din quieted down. "Glad to see that your resolve hasn't been worn down since your stay here, recruits," he said. "Yes, today is when the governments of our world collapsed and handed our future over to the aliens. Today is the day when ADVENT rose and fucked up our lives.

"They call that the day we 'progressed' from our old, corrupt selves, and embraced the 'order' and 'peace' that is the Elders and their Administration. They look at it as the foundation of their iron grip over humanity."

Bradford took a few steps, letting the words hang.

"We're going to make that day the foundation of a new, free Earth. We will make them remember it as a testament to the human will to be free, to be masters of our own lives.

"Tomorrow is when we take the fight to ADVENT."  
Cheers and whoops rose from the recruits, arms waving in the air. Even the nervous looking Chinese girl let out a high, manic titter, a rosy glow spreading across her pale cheeks. Mutt, Barry, and Petrov couldn't be more excited at the news.

"Excellent," Bradford said. "Claymore, could you bring up our schematics on Operation Gatecrasher?"

Claymore nodded, and tapped a few keys on the Avenger's holographic console. A low hum and a blue glow rose from the center of the machine as it came to life. Then, with a start, the large, concave divot in the machine's center spat out a holographic sphere.

With another button press, the shifting, unstable form of the globe dissolved, scattering into thousands of small, sky blue squares that buzzed about the air like a swarm of bees. In less than a second, the swarm had coalesced, melding together to form several tall pillars: an Advent city center.

"This is Novgorod," Bradford said, pointing at the image. "The current capital of the North European District. And it's been chosen to host this year's Unification Day celebration.

"This year's festivities are centered around two events." Bradford nodded to Claymore, who adjusted the console accordingly. The city center disappeared in a swirl of blue pixels, before reforming into an enormous statue depicting an inhuman figure with a flat, curving head and four crossed arms.

"The first is the finishing of this 'super monument'," Bradford explained. "It's been in construction for the past year, and is the main event today. That means a lot of cameras, and a lot of attention. It'll give ADVENT a perfect view of us blowing it up."

Smiles and cheers from the recruits.

"Squad Crasher will be inserted outside in the city slums, at least five miles away from the target. This team will commandeer a transport of some kind, and then make their way to the target. Once there, they will take out any Advent security forces, plant the explosives at the base of the statue, and extract."

The holographic image swirled once more, before being replaced with the models of several groups of Advent troopers marching around the area.

"Security's going to be very, very tight," Bradford said. "Ever since a small group of resistance fighters tried to bomb a gene clinic in Paris, the Advent Administration's been keeping a close eye on the populace. Reports indicate that the forces will consist of at least two battle squadrons, and one command squadron."

Bradford paused, looking over the recruits' faces.

"That means there'll probably be at least 15 of the bastards," he clarified. "And once Squad Crasher goes loud, the rest of Novgorod's garrison will be breathing down our necks.

"This is where the second part of the operation occurs," Bradford said. Behind him, the hologram shifted to form a long podium, with several figures sitting behind it. "In the southern part of Novgorod, several of Advent's highest political figures will be speaking at a rally, honoring the construction. Among these figures is the Advent Speaker."

A portrait emerged on the holographic projector of a longhaired, bespectacled man with a pencil thin neck. His high, rigid cheekbones and the slick grin on his face made him look more like a serpent than a man.

For most of the recruits, the guy looked like an absolute douchebag.

"He's the head of Advent's communication, and the face of the Administration as a whole. He'll be giving the main address today."

Five more faces appeared on the projector: an Asian man in a military uniform, a black man in a lab coat, a white man, also in military attire, a small, owlish white woman, and an Asian woman in a slim, fashionable suit.

"ADVENT has a weird tendency for censoring the true names of its workers," Bradford said. "So the only names we've gotten are these: Hades, Apollo, Zeus, Aphrodite, and Artemis, respectively.

"Hades and Zeus are the ADVENT military heads. They've been coordinating every Advent peacekeeping action in both hemispheres of the world since 2016. Apollo is ADVENT's second-best researcher, known for his work in digital security and encryption. Aphrodite, fittingly, is ADVENT's head of propaganda. Her hand is in every digital work floating in the city centers, and her voice rings from every speaker.

"Finally, Artemis is ADVENT's head of homeland security. In other words, the head of their 'secret police'."

Bradford paused. "Anyone want me to go over that again?"

Heads shook.

Bradford cleared his throat, and then continued.

"In order to keep ADVENT off of Gatecrasher, a second team will be formed. From the group standing before me today, five have been chosen to join this team, which has been dubbed 'Menace'.

"Squad Menace will be deployed a couple of hours before Gatecrasher, in a civilian vehicle requisitioned from a nearby settlement. After reaching the rally, they will focus on causing as much destruction and chaos as possible, before pulling out.

"Squad Menace's main targets will be the six officials I have just mentioned. Advent security teams on sight are also fair game. Civilians, on the other hand, are not, unless they try to obstruct your mission. Artemis, Hades, and Zeus take top priority – take every opportunity to kill them. But don't stay too long, otherwise you'll be up to your necks in security squadrons."

Bradford paused again.

"I have already chosen two people to head the squads," he said. With one hand, he pointed at Shi. "Operative Sún Shi will be squad leader of Squad Menace."

Shi stepped forward and bowed.

"And as squad leader of Squad Crasher, I have chosen Mutt."

The British smuggler stepped forward, a big grin on his face. "Shucks, boys," he said. "I won't let you down."

"Orders to the squads will be relayed by my colleague, Claymore, " Bradford said, gesturing to her. "Take them as suggestions if you will. Improvisation is encouraged, but don't make it a habit.

"I want to see you all up, and sober, with gear ready tomorrow at 7 am. We'll have to be ready if we want to bloody ADVENT's nose. Got that?"

The recruits cheered, suffused with energy. Bradford resisted the urge to holler along with them.

"Alright, then," he said. "Dismissed."


	5. Gatecrasher Pt 2 - Friendship's a Bitch

**4:00 AM**

 **Russian Wilderness, Outside of Novgorod**

The morning sky was devoid of light, rendering the snowy Russian landscape below it as black as a dead computer. Gusts of wind roared through the area, turning it into a large canvas, uniform in both sound and sight. The moon trailed in the distance, a tiny sliver that was drowning in the morning black.

A flash of light broke up the dark, followed by a loud rumbling that competed with the storm for attention. Four cones pierced the black, moving forward in unison towards the horizon. At some point, they began to separate. Two of the cones split from the pack, galloping through a winding trail lined with silent, skeletal trees, while the other two cones stayed the course and cut through the wind.

Soon, the lights and the rumbling faded, disappearing into the early morning. Everything seemed peaceful.

Seconds later, however, another rumbling emerged, louder this time. A large machine rose, its grey hull illuminated by the flames that spewed from its thrusters.

This craft flew in the same direction the cones of light had gone in earlier, cutting through the morning sky with the swiftness of a hawk.

* * *

Barry dug his mouth deeper into his scarf in a useless attempt to stave off the cold. The wind was a cold-hearted bitch, stabbing through his Kevlar jacket without mercy.

Around him, the land crawled past. A sea of snow, punctuated every now and then with the grey husk of a dead tree or a rock, moved in and out of his sight. It was very peaceful. And really, really fucking boring.

The jeep Barry was sitting in had been traded for from a nearby settlement. And despite expectations, it was actually an okay car. For one thing, the engine worked without coughing and bitching like most Old World engines did nowadays. It also had a working air conditioner and cup holders. Not that they needed either, especially since Central Officer Bradford had expressly forbade everyone (specifically Barry) from bringing any alcohol for the mission.

The only thing Barry had to complain about was the windows. Or the lack of them, to be precise. Instead of clear panes of glass sealing off jeep from the cold, bitter outside world, there were only six empty, square spaces, ringed with jagged glass teeth.

Mutt didn't seem to mind any of it, judging from his behavior. He whooped and slapped the steering wheel with his tanned fingers, pumping his fist through the empty windshield every now and then.

"Wahaa!" he cried. "Revolution's comin', baby!"

Banks groaned from the backseat. "Jesus, man," he said, giving out an exaggerated sigh. "Everyone and their mother can here you,"

"I hope they do!" Mutt said, absolutely ecstatic at that prospect. "They better know the revolution's on!" Then, without warning, he stood and threw his head and shoulders out the side window.

"HEY ADVENT!" he screamed. "THIS IS OUR FUCKIN' WORLD NOW!"

" _BLIN!_ " shouted Petrov. "Can you shut the hell up, Mutt? Bad enough I have to deal with this fucking cold!"

Mutt slapped the roof of the car, before withdrawing to his seat.

"Hey," he said, a smile wedged between his rosy, red cheeks. "Not my fault you decided not to bring a shirt."

Petrov crossed his arms, covering the flaking, pink skin of his abdomen. "You think that Kevlar shit's comfortable? Feels like I'm bathing in acid." Then, he turned towards Barry, his face contorting into a snarl.

"And if you hadn't thrown out my lotion, I wouldn't be like this!"

Barry gave him a look of hurt. "Who, me?" he said. "Why would I ever do somethin' like that?"

Petrov grunted with disgust and leaned away.

"Can you at shut your fucking trap, Mutt? Be a little like the girl?"

In the front, Mutt cackled, while the cat-eared Chinese girl from the Avenger sat to his right. Currently, she was having none of the conversation. Barry saw her staring out the window, eyes trained on the dark sky.

The ride went on in silence for a while, with Mutt shattering the calm in trademark fashion by whooping like a drunken fratboy. Finally, Banks shifted in his seat and leaned towards the center of the car.

"Anyone feeling nervous?" Banks said.

"Nah," Mutt said. He paused to brush his hair off of his forehead. "We got a dream team here. Nothin' here can take us down."

"Still, it's a City Center," Banks replied. "We're going straight into the heart of ADVENT."

Mutt shook his head. "My boys 'ave been in worse. And you two must be made of strong stuff since Claymore likes ya." He turned around fully, just to give everyone a good look. "Ain't nobody dyin' on my watch, hm? I know ya all got what it takes to get us home in one peace, ya?"

Barry nodded. "Yeah, yeah," he breathed, confidence rising in his chest. Mutt was real good at that, making you feel like you were big shot, even if you were dirt. That was why he was the leader.

Banks chuckled. "Sounds good, man. But, disclaimer here, if Pinkie over here bites it, don't say I never told you so."

Petrov's face shifted at breakneck pace at Banks.

"You – You talkin' shit about me?" he said.

Banks shrugged, pursing his lips. "Dunno, man. You're at least 6 feet, you're built like a tanker truck, and you've got skin that's pinker than a doll's dress. Kinda screams 'redshirt' to me."

"You got some nerve," Petrov snarled, shifting and turning his attention to the Canadian. Barry let out a puff of desperate air as he felt the Russian's bulk press him against the door of the jeep. "I oughta throw you out that goddamn door."

Banks cracked a small grin, and in response, Petrov's anger exploded. Blood pumped at breakneck speed throughout his facial nerves, making him look like a severely pissed off cherry.

"I'm just giving some advice," Banks said. "It'll keep you alive longer."

"Did I ask for your fucking help, _zadrota_?" Petrov said. "Hm? I been living in these wilds for years," he declared, pointing a finger out the window at the passing tundra. "What about you? You're just some shit-talking city _cyka_!"

A loud clatter interrupted the conversation. Barry, Petrov, and Banks all turned, eyes wide. For Barry, that was mostly because he'd been squashed underneath 200 pounds of Russian muscle for the past couple of minutes; still, the sight in front of him took what breath he had left away.

The Chinese girl was hanging out of the side of the jeep. Her black hair swung in the breeze, barely touching the jagged dirt of the road. Shrill winds battered the inside of the car thanks to the open passenger door, with the girl swinging back and forth, her forehead inches from the grinding rubber of the jeep's wheels.

"Holy shit!" sputtered Banks, his cool demeanor imploding. "What the hell just happened?!"

"Pull her back in, boss!" Barry pleaded, smacking the seat in front of him in desperation.

Mutt turned back, and only laughed. Wild hoots of carefree noise filled the jeep, clashing with the intensity of the moment.

"The fuck's wrong with you, Mutt?!" Petrov shouted. "You gone loopy?"

Mutt wiped a tear from his eye. "Nah. Just," he said, before turning to look at the girl. "That's what you want, right?"

The girl, amazingly, gave a thumbs up from the side of the car.

Mutt nodded, and turned back to the men.

"You're too loud," he said, completely nonchalant. "She wants you to shut it."

Barry leaped forward, arms clasped in prayer. "We'll shut up, boss!" he cried, desperate to prevent a horrible accident from happening. "Just pull her back!"

Mutt smiled, but instead of pulling the girl back in, he cocked his head towards her and clicked his teeth.

The girl whipped back from her precarious position, her spine flying back to the seat like a willow in a gale. The door followed, banging shut against the frame of the jeep. Her cat ears perked up at the new silence.

Banks, Petrov, and Barry clamped their lips together, not letting a wisp of air slip out for fear of seeing the girl try to kill herself again. The enmity that had blazed between them had now been replaced with a united sense of surprise and horror.

Content, the girl let a ditzy smile crop up on her face, as if the last few minutes had been a funny joke to her.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!" she exclaimed, as if she were an actor on a soda commercial, having sipped the sweet synthetic taste of a brand-name drink. "Good!"

Petrov began to sputter, choking on the breath he'd been holding back.

"What," Banks said, his eyebrows furrowed with confusion.

Barry had to agree; this was some weird shit. In a few seconds, the girl had gone from solemn and suicidal to a bubble of childlike glee. It was as if all the happiness in this crap world had been condensed into her tiny frame.

The girl fanned the air in front of her. "So much better here," she said, in that high, bubbly voice of hers. "Don't you think?"

Petrov rubbed his eyes, causing a flurry of dead skin to waft from his face.

"The fuck?!" he said. "Fucking hell, what were you _doing_?!"

The girl's cat ears twitched in agitation, but her face remained warm and happy. She blinked a few times, chewing on what Petrov had said to her.

"Oh, that?" she said, placing her hands on the passenger door handle. "You want to see it again?"

A large "NO!" escaped from Barry, Banks, and Petrov, as all three of them lunged forward to prevent the Chinese girl from throwing herself out the side of the jeep again. Well, that's what they wanted to do. Instead, they all ended up smacking into each other and colliding with the seats ahead of them. Barry felt the scratched plush of the girl's headrest on one side of his face, and Banks's pudgy cheeks on the other.

Petrov recovered first, extending an arm towards the girl.

"No, please God, NO!" he shouted, his hard, rocky features crumbling into a visage of pure panic. "Don't!"

The girl pursed her lips, and then withdrew her hand from the handle and placed it in her lap.

Barry waved his hand as well. "We don't want to see it again, miss. Just – what was it you were trying to do?"

"To make you quiet!" the girl said. "Wasn't it obvious?"

Petrov growled, but Barry shoved himself in front of the Russian. He put on a pathetic little grin to reassure the girl that his friend wasn't, most certainly wasn't, thinking of grinding her into a cherry colored paste.

"I mean," Barry said, trying to keep his tone even. "You could have – well, you know – _asked_ us?"

The girl's eyes rolled in annoyance, her hazel irises doing a dance of exasperation.

"Too loud," she explained. "I'm too quiet."

Mutt shrugged his shoulders. "Makes sense to me."  
"No it doesn't!" Petrov said, butting in on the conversation. "Who the hell throws themselves out of a fucking car to make a fucking _point_?"

"Everyone does it!" the girl protested.

"Really – fucking _really_ ," Petrov said, a sarcastic, tired grin crossing along his cracked face. "Who told you that?"

"The girls! They said if you want to get something done, go extreme!"

"What kind of girls do you talk to? They sound like complete wackjobs!" Banks cried.

The girl pouted. "My family," she replied, throwing her arms over her seat to emphasize the point. "From the club."

"Oh," Banks said, that one word puncturing the air before falling into the embarrassed silence that now filled the room. Petrov's face turned a bright red, and he suddenly took an avid interest at the snow building up on the floor of the jeep.

The discomfort was reasonable. After all, the sex industry within the Advent Megacities was a very… sensitive topic.

Little was known about the shady houses that catered to the deviant tastes of the Megacity's citizens. What information Barry knew wasn't pretty. Despite the legality of Advent's brothels, prostitutes had a shit deal. They were basically living property for the brothel owners, sold and traded like baseball cards. And if Claymore's story was to be believed, then even Advent had some sick interest in these "ladies of the night".

"Did I say something wrong?" the girl said. "Was I not supposed to say that?"

Barry blinked. Was this girl actually worried? Did she not know what she was talking about? Hell, was she thinking that she had scarred them or something?

Even Mutt had nothing to say, no odd reassurance or idiot advice.

"Eh, they're fine," he said, scratching his neck. "Don't worry yourself."

The girl twisted her head at Mutt, and then back at the others. Petrov and Banks merely scooted, avoiding eye contact with the girl.

The girl crept back, sighing and giving a pitiful, "beaten-puppy" look. Barry saw it, and his rotted, dust clogged insides heaved with an unfamiliar feeling. It reached out from his emaciated chest, forcing him to open his mouth.

"Y'know guys," he said, trying to be as smooth as possible while bearing the weight of the strange feeling. "We don't really know our squadmate well, yeah? So... We should, you know, introduce ourselves?"

Barry shot a glance at the girl. Instead of the flash of quiet gratitude that he had expected, the girl's face was a tapestry of confusion. In a comic parody of the raised eyebrow expression, one of the girl's cat ears had risen, as if she was trying to make sure she heard him clearly.

"I – I mean," Barry stammered, trying to keep the conversation ball going. "I'll… I'm going to start.

A pause.

"I'm, uh, I'm Barry. Just Barry. Two _r_ 's, uh, no last name. Yeah."

Petrov gave Barry a "what the hell are you doing" look, drilling his eyeballs into his scalp before placing a veiny hand to his own forehead. Mutt, on the other hand, caught on.

"Aight, that's Barry," he said. "Crazy son of a bitch who ran with me and the boys back in the Northern European districts. Real good at grenades, that 'un is. Name's Mutt, by the way." He lifted one hand from the steering wheel and held it out to the girl, not even batting an eye from the road. The girl took it, more out of formality than joy.

"That sourpuss in the back is Petrov," Mutt continued, jabbing a thumb back at the Russian in the backseat. "Good man, bad mouth. You can figure out the rest."

The girl looked at Petrov.

"What?" he snapped. The girl shot back like a frightened dear, her ears drooping against the sides of her head.

Mutt patted the girl on the shoulder. "Dun worry yaself, miss. Petrov may look like a killer grizzly, but he's just a soft teddy bear 'neath all that pink skin."

"Say that again and I'll tear your fucking earrings out," Petrov warned.

Banks snorted. "Jesus Christ!" he chortled. "You're like a fuckin' cartoon!"

The girl giggled at that. "Yeah, he is!" she concurred eagerly.

Barry cringed, waiting for the oncoming storm. But instead, something stranger happened.

Petrov actually cooled down. Barry could see the big Russian's muscles and shoulders sag, as if anger had been the only thing giving them substance. He looked like a parent crumbling after their kid shoots them the puppy dog eyes.

"What, do I look like Winnie the fucking Pooh?" Petrov said, his volume considerably weaker this time.

Banks snapped his fingers. "No!" he said, barely able to control his laughter. "You're _Piglet_!"

The whole car burst out laughing. Barry laughed the hardest, even though he had no idea what "Winnie the Pooh" was. He just assumed it would be better to play along with the situation.

"Yeah yeah," Petrov said. "Let's move the fuck on."  
Mutt nodded, but not before he wiped a tear from his eye. "Yep," he said, through smiling, jittery lips. "We haven't heard anything from the young lady, 'aven't we?"  
He smiled at the girl. "Not a worry, miss. We won't bite ya."

The girl placed a hand against her cheek.

"I'm… not sure what to say," she said.

"Name? Ya birthplace? Why ya hate Advent?" Mutt suggested.

The girl scratched her cheek, as if she was deep in thought. Her short, pixie cut hair swayed across her forehead.

"Zip," she said at last.

"Zip?" Banks echoed. "Why're you called that?"

The girl frowned, a bit confused. "I dunno," she said. "People said I was 'fast and loose'. Dunno what it means."

Banks's cheeks went blood red, as if he had ruptured a vein. Barry grinned and shot him a covert thumbs up.

"Um… Anything else?" Mutt said. "In fact, let's skip birthplace. Why do ya hate Advent, Zip?"

Zip blinked. "I dunno," she said, repeating her earlier mantra. "I didn't like their cities."

"Oh?" Mutt said.

Zip nodded, waving her head up and down in an exaggerated mime of Mutt's earlier motion. "Bad people tried to take me, but Miss Stripes came and saved me!"

"Stripes?" Barry asked.

"That's her nickname for Claymore," Banks clarified. "I spoke to her a little before this," he added.

"That's precious," Mutt said. "Whaddya think of calling each of us?"

Zip narrowed her eyes, taking on the look of a judge pondering the fate of several Death Row inmates. It was intelligent, almost frightening for Barry. He felt chills go up his spine as her cold gaze swept over him.

Finally, her serious façade broke, replaced with a look of babylike frustration.

"I dunno," she said. "No one's done anything big. I can't figure anything out."

"Thank God," Petrov muttered under his breath.

Mutt patted Zip again. "Better keep yer eyes open, eh? I'll show you real soon why they call me Firecrotch back in the brush!"

Banks's eyes widened. "You," he coughed, almost choking on a combination of disbelief and laughter. "You do know what you just said, _right_?"

"Don't bother," Petrov said aloud. "I tried telling him. He keeps shutting me up."

"'Cause it's a great name!" Mutt protested. "All the ladies love it!"

"For all the wrong fuckin' reasons!" Banks replied. "It's supposed to mean –"

"Shut it!" Mutt said. "I'mma invoke my team leader powers, aight?" He waited, listening for any protest. The only sound came from Barry's mouth as he tried to cover it up with one grimy, stiff hand. Whenever Mutt got crazy like that, Barry couldn't help but laugh. It was pure comedic gold.

Mutt pointed a finger at Banks, taking on an air of power and godlike authority. "As punishment, ya gonna refer to me as 'Commander Firecrotch', aight?"

Banks rolled his eyes, and nodded his head only a slight bit. Then, under his breath: "Fucking A."

Zip giggled. "You're all so funny!" she declared.

* * *

Claymore wasn't in any condition to do anything productive in the morning, especially at this ungodly hour. Her body was like that of a house cat's – strictly conditioned to lying around and snoring for hours on end. But, unfortunately, Bradford had to remove her from the comfy haven of her bed and plant her in the hellish confines of the command room.

"It's been eight hours," Bradford had said. "I'm sure that's enough time for you to get back to your feet."

Claymore had mumbled an affirmative and given a sloppy salute. After another assurance that she was good and ready for the job, Bradford had left, and Claymore had promptly thrown herself on the command console, snoring in a decidedly unprofessional manner atop the advanced hardware of the Avenger.

It took a bit of time, but Claymore was finally roused from her slumber when she heard the clanging of metal and sparks.

"Hm?" she muttered, her vision a hazy mess of greys and blues. Her eyelids parted, and she frowned, remembering the unpleasant duty she'd been saddled with.

In a corner to her right, a person was working, rummaging through a random compartment. Sparks flew, scattering across the floor of the Avenger like flaming ticks.

"Oh, you're awake?" called the person, in what Claymore assumed to be a sarcastic tone of voice – it sure as hell didn't sound sincere.

Claymore didn't really feel up to providing a snarky rebuttal, so she went with the go-to: "Yeah." Then, she rubbed her eyes and leaned up against the console to get a better look.

Through heavy eyelids, Claymore saw a youthful Chinese woman staring back at her. Dressed in an orange shirt with an XCOM decal, jeans, and a torn up jacket, she was the picture of toughness. Muscles bulged across the expanse of her skin, while dust and oil stains coated her face with a veil of filth. She stared at Claymore with a neutral expression.

"Erm…" Claymore began, tapping a finger against the console. "Who are you?"

The woman's face remained unchanged, but Claymore detected a slight tension, where there had been none before.

"XCOM's Chief Engineer," the woman said. "Lily Shen."

Claymore's eyes snapped open and ricocheted off the sides of her eye sockets.

"Holy shit!" she exclaimed, her mouth an excited _O._ "You're – you're little Shen, right? Raymond's kid?"

At the mention of that name, Lily's features softened.

"Yeah," she said. "That's me."

Claymore rushed up to her, arm outstretched.

"Jesus Christ, you're a good looking kid!" she said, grabbing and shaking Lily's arm like a limp doll.

"Thanks?" Lily replied, half afraid that this middle-aged stranger was about to rip her arm off. When Claymore finally stopped shaking her hand, Lily placed a finger to her chin.

"You knew my father?"

Claymore glanced up at her, an enormous smile on her face. "Hell yeah!" Her excitement faded a little, however, when she noticed the sensitive gleam in Lily's eyes. The memory of her first conversation with Bradford weighed heavy on her mind, like a mild hangover.

"Shit," she muttered. "I didn't mean –"

"It's fine," Lily blurted, giving Claymore an awkward smile. "I've gotten over it."

"Yeah," Claymore replied, completely unconvinced that Lily was being truthful. "I'll just say, your dad was a good guy, little Shen. And I don't say that about a lot of men."

"Little Shen?" Lily asked.

"Habit of mine," Claymore said. "Get used to it."

Lily shrugged and did as Claymore said."

"So, you knew my dad pretty well?"

Claymore nodded. "Definitely. Guessing you want me to talk about him? Chew the fat a little bit?"

She moved towards the Avenger's consoles and sat in one of the swivel chairs that populated the sidelines. With one arm she motioned for Lily to sit in the one across from her.

"Oh, no thank you," Lily said. "I'm fine standing."

"Relax a bit!" Claymore replied. "We're talking about your father's legacy here, and you've been working for God knows how fucking long. Take a seat, little Shen!"

Lily took a few reluctant steps forward, before gingerly settling in the seat. Despite the seat's comfortable exterior, Lily looked a touch uncomfortable, even annoyed. Her hands fidgeted, tapping against one another with a mania that reminded Claymore of those uncomfortable times that she'd been on withdrawal from elerium.

"Alright, first of all," Claymore began. "I apologize for not realizing you existed. Bradford told me about you, but with all the trips and whatnot –"

"Don't worry," Lily said. "Bradford probably should've told you I don't come out of my workshop often anyways."

"The same could be said about me and my bedroom if I didn't have this damn job to worry about," Claymore replied, eliciting a small chuckle from Lily.

"Anyways," Claymore continued. "Your dad."

"Uh, yeah."

"Just –" Claymore twiddled with her fingers, trying to string the words together in a "polite" manner. "Just really curious about one thing."

"That is?"

"I mean, you are the daughter of your _father_. Weren't you two, y'know, close?"

"What makes you think that?" Lily asked. Her tone had gotten agitated again.

"Well, Raymond wouldn't, to put it frankly, shut up about you, little Shen."

Claymore saw Lily's eyes widen a bit at that. Her posture had stiffened initially, but now it was moving into a relaxed, almost solemn state.

"I do mean it," she reassured Lily. "I mean, the time I was at XCOM, if he – Raymond – wasn't talking about laser guns or murder boxes on treads, he was always talking about you. His daughter."

"Oh," was all that came out of Lily.

"Yeah, don't get me wrong," Claymore said. "He was absolutely nutters about you. I remember this one time he showed me this tiny robot thing you made –"

"The science fair?!" Lily gasped, horrified.

"Yeah, that one!" Claymore clarified. "That thing was, honestly, fucking amazing. It could dance and spew all these cute little songs in Chinese –"

Lily raised a hand, an embarrassed hue on her face. "Please," she said. "Stop."

"It won first prize!" Claymore said. "Your dad loved the hell out of it!"

"It's not my best work," Lily said. "Plus, I made it during a bit of a… phase, of mine."

"At fifteen years old, that's pretty damn amazing," Claymore retorted.

"Yeah," Lily said, unconvinced at Claymore's sentiment. Then, in a tentative voice: "Did he show you anything else?"

"Just pictures, if I can recall," Claymore said. "Awards, piano recitals… I thought to myself back then that you were the _perfect_ image of the Asian stereotype.

"What?" Claymore said when Lily frowned at her. "Oh, lighten up. I wasn't playing Mozart at local theatres when I was fourteen."  
"It sounds like you and dad were pretty close," Lily said.

"Oh yeah, we were," Claymore replied. Then, her eyes bugged out and her cheeks puffed when she realized the implications of her sentence.

"Hooooooly shit," Claymore wheezed. "I – I definitely, I swear to Jesus, did not mean it in _that_ way."

"Uh, okay," Lily said, completely clueless to her companion's attempt to save face.

Claymore nodded. "We talked a lot. Mostly because I was interest in his work. You saying that you didn't know your dad very well?"

Lily glanced downward before talking, her hand wiping a few stray strands of jet-black hair from her forehead.

"I – I struck a vein there, didn't I," Claymore moaned, smacking the palm of her hand against her face.

Lily looked up with a start and shook her head with vigor.

"No, no," she said. "It's not your fault that you don't know. It probably would be better to have _someone_ to talk to about it."

A bit of silence, before she moved on.

"I never really knew my dad after I was born. Back in Taiwan, Mom had run out on him because she never _intended_ for me to happen, whatever that means. That meant he was stuck, cooking for me, caring for me, and working to bring in cash.

"I thought I had it hard then, right? Barely seeing my dad except in the morning and at night. Throughout all this, dad was winning awards, giving lectures, and developing technology that made people's lives better. I didn't _know_ any of that. All I knew was that my dad, the smartest person in the world, was a caring man who'd sing me old songs in Cantonese before I went to bed.

"When he got enough money to move to the United States with me, I thought that would be the end of it. That he'd be free of work, and we'd live and play together. Hilarious, right?"

Lily gave a weak, melancholy smile and leaned against one of the consoles. Claymore only furrowed her eyebrows, overcompensating in her attempt to ensure that she looked as attentive as possible. To Lily, it looked like Claymore had a resting bitch face.

"That's when he left again," Lily breathed. "Only this time for good. Right after my fifteenth birthday, someone from the United Nations visited us. Told us that my dad had to join a special program for the sake of 'global security'. I only had a few minutes to say goodbye, and after that, I never saw him again.

"I later learned from Bradford that my dad had been working for XCOM as its head of engineering. A little like daughter like father, right? He was helping stop an extraterrestrial invasion, trying in vain to fight off this unknown, conquering force. Two months into the fight, the aliens invaded XCOM's old HQ in the US Midwest. My father died in the crossfire."

Lily stopped to sigh for a second, her voice heavy with emotion. "I didn't even think that birthday would be the last time I saw him. I always assumed he'd come back, no matter what happened. Maybe I still think that today."

Claymore's lower lip quivered, and she felt something wet lurch down the side of her face, burrowing a trail until it disappeared in the confines of her jacket. Her nose became congested, but she resisted the urge to break the silence by snorting like a jackass.

"That's why I keep asking people about him," Lily continued. "People like Bradford and you. So I can piece together a picture of my father, maybe get some closure."

Claymore's face caved in, and she let out a heavy gasp.

"Hooooooooly shit," she said, her chest heavier than a block of cement. "Goddamnit!"

Lily chuckled a bit at her reaction. "That's a new one."

Claymore raised a hand. "Just a minute!" she called, placing another hand against her chest in a theatrical manner. She gave several heaving sobs, most of which sounded like a drunk trying to dry heave into a toilet. A few more tears squeezed their way out of her eyes, plopping against the floor like bird droppings.

"I'm – I'm fine, little Shen," she breathed at last. "Fuck that's sad – no, not sad, it's a fucking _tragedy_."

Lily gave a sad smile. "I appreciate it."

"I still can't believe he's gone," Claymore muttered. "It's like hearing about 9/11 all over again."  
"Are you okay?" Lily said. "I hope I didn't accidentally scar you for life about this. As an assistant of his or something like that, I can understand if this is extremely hard for you to take."

Claymore shook her head and placed her hand against her forehead, but in the midst of her tragic monologue, something didn't click.

 _She said assistant_ , she realized.

Carefully, Claymore opened up again: "Nah, that's wrong."

Lily's eyebrows rose a few inches on her face. "What's wrong?" she asked.

Claymore pointed a finger at her. "The – the whole assistant thing. That's not true."

"It's not?" Lily's head leaned sideways upon hearing that. "But I assumed, given your interest in his work –"

"It's a bit complicated," Claymore said. "I was – well, I was a prisoner of sorts."

" _Prisoner_?!" Lily said, almost shouting the word.

"Yeah, yeah," Claymore responded. "I was, uh, part of this group. EXALT. You heard of them?"

Lily's eyes narrowed into predatory slits. "Yes, I do," she said, her voice grating the air.

"Yeah. Bad crowd to tangle with. But, your dad was real nice – helped me turn a new leaf and shit like that. A lifesaver, I'll tell you."

"Mmhm," Lily said. Then, she rose and began to walk out the room.

Claymore bolted upright. "Wait, little Shen, what's wro –"

Lily snapped back towards Claymore, hand raised.

"Just _stop_ ," she warned, her voice completely dead pan. "Don't call me that."

Claymore let her arms fall to her sides. "What's wrong?" she continued.

Lily let out an enormous breath, and regarded Claymore from the corner of her eye.

"Really? I thought it was obvious, since my father's killer is standing right here."

Claymore started back in surprise. "Killer?!" she blurted. "The _hell_ are you talking about?!"

"Nevermind," Lily said. "I realize I've wasted my time and emotional reserve talking to you." She began to walk back out to the hallway.

"Little She – Lily! Hold on, hold on, I'm not involved with EXALT anymore! Listen to me, Lily!" Claymore pleaded.

Lily didn't respond. It was as if Claymore were trying to negotiate with a brick wall. She only walked, and walked, until she was out of Claymore's sight.

Claymore was at a complete, total loss. All the energy had been sapped from her body.

Soon, however, her fists began to clench, growing tense with anger and frustration. She grabbed at her jacket pocket with frenzied energy, ripping out another pack of elerium dust from her stash. She didn't even bother with a drink this time – she just chugged the whole boiling load down her throat.

"FUCK!" she screamed, from the burning in her throat and the raw pain and frustration in her chest.

She tossed the bag on the floor and kicked at the hologlobe, her boot colliding against the smooth metal. A jolt of pain ran up her toes, slithering into her waist.

"Good," she muttered with savage breath through a mouthful of crushed elerium. "You fucking deserve it, you goddamn IDIOT!"

With another burning, gasping breath, she collapsed, back against the hologlobe, and curled up into a ball, cursing herself.

* * *

Matilda, despite all the contempt she held for the world, couldn't help but be impressed by the spectacle unfolding in the streets in front of her.

When it came to Unification Day, Novgorod had taken its responsibilities quite seriously. The whole city was alive, with every light and digital screen being pushed to full power. Flashes of brightly colored propaganda flickered from every television screen and kiosk, barraging the senses. Decorations hung proudly from every street corner, each one displaying the careful consideration and micromanagement that the Eastern European Administration was known for.

Matilda and her group had already been swallowed by what could only be described as a veritable river of humanity. People jostled and moved past them, their numbers so thick that the ground beneath their feet was swallowed up in a shifting tapestry of skin colors. Children dodged throughout the crowd, giggling and holding flags and banners, while vendors stood to the side, hawking several Advent-approved delicacies to any passerby.

"Ice cream for four credits!"

"Delicious shashlick for sale! Made entirely from CORE – no animal protein used!"

"Drinks, drinks! Come celebrate Unification Day with nonalcoholic delights!"

It went on, filling the morning air with human voices and dialects. If Matilda hadn't already been disillusioned with society, she would've had half a mind to join in on the festivities.

"Come on, Miguel!" came a voice. "I've got enough change!"

Beside Matilda, Miguel gave a sigh and planted his hands further into his leather jacket.

"No means no, Patricia," he groaned.

" _Por favooooor_!" she pleaded, leaning against her brother's shoulder.

Miguel batted her away, with a look that was two parts endearment, one part extreme annoyance.

" _Dios mio,_ no! Do you want the commander coming down on your _nalgas_ again?"

Patricia pouted and rolled her eyes. "It'll be quick. Plus I can't blow up the statue on an empty –"

"SHHHHH!" Miguel sputtered, planting a glove over his sister's mouth and looking left and right. "Someone might here you!"

"Miguel!" came a shout from behind them. The crowds parted, revealing the bulky figure of Shi.

"What the hell are you doing?" he said, stomping up to the Spanish twins.

"I – I, uh," Miguel stuttered, going pale at the Chinese operative's intense glare. "Well –"

"No time!" Shi interrupted. He grabbed Miguel's hand and shoved it away, causing the Spaniard to bump into a couple across from them.

"Jesus!" one man yelled.

Miguel rose instantly, and put his hands out for reassurance. " _Lo siento_ , _señor_ , I was – "

"Watch where you're going, you fucking refugee!" the man replied, before picking himself up and walking away.

Miguel turned around as the crowd shifted, an offended look on his face.

"Refugee? What the fuck's he talking 'bout?"

Matilda glanced down at everyone's clothes, and realized why they had been attracting so much attention since their arrival.

To conceal the Kevlar vests they had been wearing in preparation for the operation, most of the team had opted for long coats and other obscuring clothes. The trouble was, most of these were in quite crappy condition, and were in the Old World style. That, along with the fact that the Rivera twins had chosen to wear their motorcycle jackets rather than actual combat gear, marked their squad out from the standard grain of Advent citizen.

"My, my," said Mrs. Sycamore, toddling up from behind Shi. "Such crass language. Like a bunch of children, the lot of you."

Shi nodded. "Indeed," he concurred, before looking at the rest of the squad. "We should be focusing on our objective instead of gawking."

"I didn't just mean the squad, Mr. Sún," Mrs. Sycamore said.

Shi ignored her. "Keep moving forward," he ordered. "We have limited time to reach the safehouse and get ready for our operation. Alright?"

Everyone else nodded, making it fully clear that they'd understood what Shi had said. Shi had already established himself as a complete hard ass, so it was important to give a good impression of yourself in his eyes.

Before they could actually get going, however, the crowds parted to reveal an unexpected development.

"Halt!" came a voxified cry.

Matilda jerked her head in the direction of the sound, and nearly choked.

Two Advent troopers were bearing down on the group at full speed, rifles at the ready.

Matilda's heart stopped a beat. If they were compromised this early, operation Gatecrasher was screwed.

* * *

 **6:00 AM**

 **ADVENT Parade Ground, 3** **rd** **Security Precinct of Novgorod**

The man known as Zeus twitched, scratching at his uniform. The synthetic fabric felt like sandpaper on his tanned skin, making him yearn for the days when uniforms were simpler and softer.

Still, he admitted, the thing kept the cold out. Despite its light, thin texture, the uniform was like a miniature bubble of insulation. A good layer of frost had built over him, a sea of white glazing over his uniform's deep navy blue, and he didn't feel a bit of it.

Around him, the Advent rally ground was barren. Snow, like the agitated masses that would be there later today, crowded around the edges of the black pads marking the grounds, the pads' heated coils beating back the cold with a subtle ferocity.

The only other living things on the grounds were the security squads that had been deployed for the event – around four squadrons' worth. Each trooper stood stock still, covered in a thick layer of frost that made them seem like otherworldly sentinels from some fantasy novel.

Zeus twitched again and reached up, brushing away the flakes of snow that had accumulated on the top of his scalp. He could have worn a beret for the event too, but he had refused. Hilariously, his lack of hair had become something of a trademark for him. Crowds would have a harder time recognizing him if he put on a hat, or, Elder forbid, a wig.

"Sir, are you certain you want to stay out here?"

Zeus turned and saw an Advent Captain behind him, cape fluttering in the wind.

"The lodge is open," the Captain said. "My men and I are taking care of preparations."

"It's alright, Slip," Zeus said. "The lodge is too cramped for me anyway."

Captain "Slip" nodded, before marching off and leaving Zeus to his thoughts once more.

Zeus had a little bit of time to stare at the Novgorod skyline before he heard footsteps crunching behind him.

"Slip, that you?" he called.

The footsteps stopped. "Really," said a smooth, officious voice.

"Ah, Hades," Zeus said. "Didn't realize you were out of the lodge."

"You know I despise Aphrodite," Hades said, as he sidled up to his fellow administrator. The man wore the same uniform as Zeus, although he had also chosen to wear the blue military beret. A pair of sky blue eyes, pulsing with intelligence, stared from the man's scrunched up face.

"Her demeanor and attitude are undignified," Hades continued.

"That's a propaganda administrator for you," Zeus replied. "It's her job to be annoyingly cheerful."

"Indeed," Hades said. He paused, before speaking again. "I see you've taken to using your 'pet names' on the troops again."

Zeus smiled. "I don't see the harm in it."

"It's extremely unprofessional," Hades said. "ADVENT gives these soldiers designations for a reason."

"Well, until ADVENT comes up with something more creative than 'Trooper 11305', I'm sticking with my names."

Hades puffed air through his nostrils in annoyance. "Your voice reeks of dissent," he said.

"Just dissatisfaction, Hades," Zeus said, keeping his tone nonchalant. "These men and women are sacrificing their lives for me. I don't want them to sacrifice their personalities as well."

"This is the _military_ ," Hades breathed, his voice growing more indignant. "Not some _halmoni's_ birthday. If you get kids, you can stick your stupid names on them. Not on these soldiers."

"Jesus, Hades," Zeus said, resisting the urge to chuckle at the diminutive Korean's anger. "I thought the weather would _cool_ your temper, not stoke it."  
Hades grunted, clearly finished with the conversation. He turned and walked back towards the lodge, his spine appearing as stiff and straight as an alloy rebar.

Zeus sighed as his comrade left him. Almost twenty years of work, and he still couldn't get along with any of his coworkers, human or alien. For them, work and reputation were far more important than establishing any form of relationship with each other. It was a wonder why they hadn't turned and ripped each other apart, like the squabbling governments of old.

That was why Zeus relied on the troopers and the people. The doubt instilled in him by his comrade's petty competition was erased and replaced with a sense of pride, shining like the sun, whenever he was around the citizens. Unlike most Advent administrators, they seriously subscribed to ADVENT's messages of unity and salvation. They gelled with each other, and with others outside their social circles, as easily as ice cubes did with hot water.

Zeus imagined the crowds that would gather today, the throngs of cheering men, women, and children. Each a gleaming product of ADVENT's infallible philosophy. His throat yearned to speak with them once more, to take to the podium and hear their roaring cry as they saw him.

It would be a wonderful day.


	6. Gatecrasher Pt 3 - Action, Finally!

**6:00 AM  
Mainstreet, 3** **rd** **Security Precinct of Novgorod**

"I said halt!" yelled Trooper #1. He hustled his way through the crowd, followed by his slimmer companion.

"What do we do?" Mrs. Sycamore whispered to Matilda.

The doctor could only shake her head. They stood out too easily from the crowd. Running would only confirm that their intentions weren't Advent-oriented.

Matilda hoped that they'd be able to resolve this without a gunfight, but she knew from experience that life always dealt you the shit hand, just for laughs.

So, just for posterity, she began to finger the trigger of the pistol in her coat. And with each step the troopers took, she felt the pressure on the trigger grow.

The troopers clonked their way to the group, causing the crowd to give the whole area a wide berth. Matilda noticed that they weren't pointing their guns at them. That was a remarkably good sign, considering that Advent peacekeepers were of the "shoot first and never ask questions" breed.

"Are you refugees?" demanded Trooper #1, his voice harsh and bureaucratic.

Miguel scowled in annoyance.

"No, sir," Shi said, calm and even. "We were recently registered. I have identification right here."

"Produce it, then," barked Trooper #1. "Quickly."

Everyone fumbled in their pockets before producing the needed items. Matilda, her arm outstretched with a plastic card in its grip, breathed a silent thanks to XCOM's foresight and the Resistance's ingenuity. It had taken a while, but they'd managed to find a printer who could make near-perfect Advent identification cards. Sure, they were obscenely expensive, but having the ability to travel unmolested in Advent territory was worth it.

Trooper #1 and Trooper #2, respectively male and female based on their form and voice, separated and looked over the cards.

Trooper #2, when she got to Matilda, stopped and took a good look at the French doctor. Matilda felt sweat bunch up on her bald scalp. Did she do something wrong?

The trooper's face (or what was visible through the helmet) gave a dismissive sneer.

"I'd suggest you check out a gene therapy center immediately, ma'am," she said. "ADVENT's got ordnances you need to keep up with. Plus, we wouldn't want to spoil the festivities with that 'hair', now would we?"

Trooper #2 moved away, leaving Matilda with a tic in her right eye, and a violent urge to tear someone's throat out.

"They check out," Trooper #1 finally said. "However, you all _are_ in violation of several civil regulations," he told the group.

"Really, officer?" Shi asked. "We're new, so please excuse us for being... ignorant to ADVENT legislation."

"Well, for starters," Trooper #1 said. "Your lady friend there ought to get some hair regrowth done. The rest of you should buy some new clothes as well. Just a matter of public decency."

"Mhm," Shi said, a shit-eating grin pasted on his face. "We'll make sure to do that, Officer. Right everyone?"

Everyone else nodded. Besides Matilda, whose bald visage was fuming with anger.

"Alright then," Trooper #1 said. "You all have a happy Unification Day."

"Same to you, Officer," Shi replied.

The two Advent troopers planted their fists against their chests – the typical Advent salute – before moving away and disappearing into the crowd. Traffic resumed once more, and the rebels were on their way towards their target.

"Fucking _ridiculo_ ," Miguel complained. "Clothing regulations? Even my _madre_ wasn't this much of a bitch."

"I hope those two are on patrol when we hit the site," Matilda seethed between her teeth.

"You and me both, missy," Mrs. Sycamore agreed. "Bloody common decency my ass."

"Shut it, all of you," Shi growled. "We're almost to the safehouse. Keep your traps closed and we won't have to put up with this shit again."

They took a left, and found themselves in a barren part of Novgorod. They went down a deserted alleyway, which Matilda found unnerving due to the lack of filth on it. It was like walking through the choking corridors of some kind of machine, rather than through the urban landscape she'd grown up with.

"There," Shi breathed. He patted a hand against a steel door built into the wall.

On the top of the door was the mark, just like the Resistance contacts had said. A small, blue "X", something that could easily be mistaken for a random piece of graffiti, stared down at them.

"Finally," Mrs. Sycamore said, grinning. "Let's start this damn thing."

* * *

 **7:00 AM**

 **Edge of Novgorod, Security Precinct 37**

After a few more minutes of awkward, curse-ridden conversation, the jeep finally slowed to a stop in a parking lot. The area was deserted, since it was far from the Unification day festivities. Snow gathered all along the black concrete, while the lights from advertisements and surveillance lamps glowed soft blues and reds in the overcast sky.

The jeep's door opened, and Barry snuck out. He shivered and patted himself down, beating warmth back into his frozen bones. Then, he surveyed the scene, looking as far as he could through the snow flurries to see if anyone was watching.

Satisfied with his preliminary scan, he banged the side of the jeep.

The passenger side door popped open almost instantly in response, with Zip tumbling out like a wet rag.

"Whee!" she chuckled, falling flat onto the snow. "It's soooo nice out here!"

Barry couldn't help but smile at Zip's childlike demeanor. It was definitely growing on him, like some kind of weird alien fungus.

Petrov, on the other hand, was unimpressed.

"Get up," he growled. "You're on a goddamn mission, not a game of tag!"

Petrov's meaty forearm moved forward in one great flash of pink, and lifted Zip from the snow. The Chinese dancer giggled, and flopped onto her feet like a shoddily built ragdoll.

Behind him, Banks had also emerged. The Canadian moved behind the jeep, and popped the locks on the trunk. A flurry of snow that had collected on the rear windshield hit the ground with a loud "flump" while Banks reached in.

"Everything's here," he called out. With one hand, he held out a beige-colored rifle.

"Mine!" Barry said, wrapping his eager fingers around the weapon. He cradled it against his frozen chest, his eyes dancing with glee.

If Central Officer Bradford's word was to be believed, then Barry was holding the most powerful automatic ballistic weapon on Earth. The X-10, built off an older model, was as next generation as one could get. Unbelievable rate of fire, increased penetration, inability to jam, and the capability to adapt to any ammunition type – in essence, a damn good weapon.

Everyone else grabbed their own rifles, as well as a few personal items. Barry grabbed a bandolier of grenades and clipped it against his waist. The explosive bundle tugged at his pants, pulling his trousers down until a good portion of his waistline was exposed.

Looking at Banks, Barry saw a similar bunch of objects dangling from the operative's waist.

Seeing Barry's glance, Banks tapped the payload. "Spray paint and smoke bombs – tools of the graffiti artist's trade. Never know when you might need 'em."

Mutt wasn't paying attention, his gaze pointed lovingly at the steel baseball bat in his hands.

"Agh, can't wait to use this beaut again!" he said, his voice quivering with almost orgasmic delight. "I can already see them Advent skulls!"

He gave a practiced hit, letting the bat fly through the air and knocking the shit out of a few snowflakes. Then, he turned back towards the trunk and leaned forward, sweeping his hand across the floor of it.

Mutt turned again.

"Guys?" he said. "I don't think we brought enough guns."

"What?" said Petrov.

"Yeah, we don't have anythin' for Zip!" he said. He leaned forward again, and then lifted up a small, black object. "Jus' this dinky thing."

Zip sprang forward, and snapped up the item with her mouth. Hitting the ground, she spit it into the snow, and then grasped the thing with both hands.

"It's mine, mine!" she chattered. "Miss Stripes gave me this!"

Banks leaned and examined the object, making sure not to get too close.

"Whew," he commented. "That's a bona-fide mag pistol if I've ever seen one."

"You gotta be fuckin' kidding me," Petrov said. "We get the shitty guns and she gets the serious firepower. _Blin_."

"Well, I can't hold one of those big guns," Zip replied. "I need bigger." She waved the magnetic pistol in front of Petrov's face. "Seeeeee?"

Petrov drew his hands up to his face.

"Woah, woah! Don't fuckin' shoot!" he cried. "Watch where you swing that thing!"

This only got Zip to swing the gun even faster.

"Aight, aight," Mutt said, smiling. "We gotta get going. The statue's just a few blocks ahead of us. We blow it, and we can dick around at home. Gotit?"

Everyone nodded.

"Yeah," Petrov said. "Just don't do anything stupid."

With that, the five of them marched into the city, disappearing into the slurry of steel buildings and twirling snowflakes.

* * *

 **8:00 AM**

 **Advent Parade Ground, 3** **rd** **Security Precinct of Novgorod**

"It's almost time!" Aphrodite shouted, her voice suffused with glee.

"Indeed it is," Hades said. "Let's get this over with."

"I can't believe we're in agreement for once," Artemis said, her elderly face completely deadpan. "I hope this doesn't become of a habit of yours."  
"Nonsense, Artemis," Hades replied. "I'll always detest your cowardly cloak and dagger tactics."

"How touching," was Artemis's only reply.

Apollo merely gave a nervous smile, and adjusted his glasses and tie.

"Showtime," murmured Zeus, before he stepped outside from the backstage.

He felt simultaneously buffeted and energized by the cheering. Shouts of sublime joy rang from the crowd in front of him, filling the air with enough sound to coat the entire Earth, and then some. Makeshift banners and signs shook with epileptic frenzy, announcing the people's love for their favorite Administrator.

As Zeus took his seat at the conference table, his fellow Administrators followed him. The cheers that came were more subdued, but still filled with earnest energy.

"What a crowd," Apollo remarked, shifting in his seat next to Zeus's. "I – I didn't think we'd get this many."

"You're the most famous cyber expert in history, Apollo," Zeus replied, leaning back into his chair. "People would kill to be in your shoes."

Apollo grimaced. "That hits a bit too close to home, Zeus."

Zeus gritted his teeth as well. "Indeed it does," he said. Advent politics, while competitive, never devolved into full-blown murder. But Apollo had the misfortune of having a predecessor who had done just that to secure his place as head of ADVENT's cyber security. Just another issue to pile on the man's massive mountain of anxiety.

"WE ARE LIVE!" came a voice from beneath the stage. Upon that announcement, multiple cameras came to life, swinging towards the stage and leering about like mechanical serpents.

An Indian reporter took that cue to run up to the stage. "Tahirah Amiri here, live from Novgorod!" she said, waving to the camera and the crowd with a jovial smile. The cameras followed her every movement, watching her until she sat down in a seat besides Aphrodite.

"I'm here today at the center of this year's 20th Anniversary of Unification Day," Tahirah said. "Where the hearts and minds behind our great nation have, for the first time, decided to appear before the public!"

Clapping and cheers thundered throughout the area, with some people straining their vocal chords in order to let their support ring out.

When the cheering died down, Tahirah went on with the address.

"Forgive me for being so quick," she said to the speakers. "But I must ask, weren't there supposed to be six of you at today's address?"

The five administrators looked at one another, before turning to Zeus, their de facto head. He cleared his throat before leaning towards the microphone.

"Originally, yes, Mrs. Amiri," he said. "Unfortunately, our friend, the Speaker, was called on by the Elders to perform another address elsewhere in the city, in order to alleviate the heavy traffic Novgorod was experiencing."

"Another stunning display of our Elder's kindness and thoughtfulness, don't you think everyone?" said Aphrodite.

The crowd roared in agreement.

"With that out of the way, then," Tahirah said. "I'd like to talk history. Specifically, 20 years ago."

"Oh, I don't think you want to hear that, Tahirah," Artemis said. "It's too embarrassing."

The reporter chuckled. Guffaws and laughter rang from the crowd.

"She's right," Hades interjected. He was all smiles now, with a perfect grin floating across the surface of his face. "Why would we want to talk about what we were before ADVENT? Compared to what we do now, to what we are now, what we were twenty years ago was meaningless. It's like comparing preschool to college!"

"Wise words, Administrator Hades," the reporter acknowledged. "Ones I'm sure we can all relate to. But it's not that history I want to talk about. I want to go back, to the conception of the ADVENT Administration, when we first made contact with the Elders."

Aphrodite raised her hand. "Since we're talking school, do I have to ask for permission to speak?"

Tamirah laughed again. "No, no, Administrator. Speak away!"

"Gladly!" Aphrodite said. "It all began twenty years ago, in the year 2015…"

As ADVENT's propaganda administrator began to chatter away in excited, machine gun fashion about the corruption of the Old World and the brilliant beginning of the ADVENT Administration, Zeus took the time to stare absentmindedly into the crowd. His gaze scanned the throngs of adoring followers and true believers. Men, women, black people, Asian people, children, cripples; all walks of human life were present and united.

Zeus felt proud to be an integral part of this system, one he knew where people could coexist, where the unknown was something to explored and exploited, rather than feared.

As he continued to gaze, Aphrodite's speech hammering into his ears, his heart fluttered at a particular group of people. A group of men and women, dressed in rags. Likely refugees, probably traveling from one of the settlements that littered the Earth's surface.

Something like that was definitely admirable, Zeus decided. That people, from such a poverty-ridden background, would travel so far and still take time out of their day to learn about the Administration was another testament to ADVENT's influence and good will.

In fact, he noticed that they were moving closer. Almost as if they wanted a better look. Well, by all means, Zeus thought, let them get it. They can even take photos if they want.

Then, something clicked. One of the people was reaching into their clothes, and Zeus saw a glimpse of a beige colored object, with the unmistakable shape of a gun barrel latched onto it.

His military instincts kicked him, screaming warnings at him.

His legs tensed, and every hair on his body tingled. The world around him slowed to a crawl, allowing him to see one of the "refugees" pull a grenade launcher from their coat.

As the grenade flew in a deadly arc, popping out of its harness with nary a sound, towards the conference table, Zeus flew also. He leaped from his chair, arms wrapping around Apollo, causing the two of them to collide against the stage.

A moment later, a tremor hurled them a second time. Zeus felt his eardrums ring as his body was thrown onto the floor.  
He turned his head, still deaf, and saw smoke and flame rising from the table. People were screaming, flailing about. Security forces were shouting, firing shots into the air.

In the midst of the chaos, Zeus saw Hades sprawled on the remains of the table. His blue eyes, held open by rigor mortis rather than the brutal intellect that had once resided behind them, stared at the sky, mercifully missing the scattered remnants of his lower body.

Why, was all Zeus could ask himself. _Why?_


	7. Gatecrasher Pt 4 - PTSD Buffet

**8:00 AM**

 **Center of Festivities – 1** **st** **Security Precinct of Novgorod**

"Jesus," Barry said, eyes lifted towards the heavens. "That thing's –"

"Fucking hideous!" screeched Banks. The Canadian was busy clenching and unclenching his fists, while his body vibrated with rage.

" _This_ is the centerpiece?" he said, pointing at the large statue in the distance. "That piece of shit?"

Mutt pulled at the side of his mouth.

"Eh," he said. "Looks fine to me."

"Where's the detail, or the spirit?" Banks said. "It's basically the same as the hunk of metal it was molded from!"

"Better shut it, Banks," Petrov warned. "Crowd's are comin'."

Right on cue, the five resistance fighters began to wade through the crowds of Novgorod. It wasn't too much of a struggle – everyone there was going to the same place that they were. Of course, a few eyebrows were raised at the sight of Petrov's skin and Zip's ears, but no one gave them any bother.

Barry took it easy, moving step by step through the crowd. He felt like leaping out of his skin, turning into one great lightning bolt of destruction. The lust for combat was whittling him down to a bundle of jumpy nerve fibers.

So when Petrov grabbed him by the shoulder and hauled him into a small side street, he nearly pulled out his rifle. Seeing the Russian's familiar face, however, calmed him down.

"Follow the fucking group, _blin_ ," Petrov said, unaware of how close he'd gotten to being perforated. He motioned for Barry to hurry.

Deeper they went, moving away from the happy city sounds and into a more barren section of the town.

By the time Barry caught up with the rest of the group, they were all huddled in an alleyway, their heads poking out at the street beyond.

"Wassup?" Barry said as he crept up behind the group.

Mutt turned and pointed a finger at the street.

"Hit the fuckin' jackpot," he said. "Whole place's empty. Must be fer a parade or somethin'."

"Hold that," Banks said, abrupt and calm. "I see two guys."

"Soldiers?" Petrov said.

Banks shook his head. "Civilians. Just a couple of janitors cleaning up." He ducked his head out, but shot back like a rabbit.

"Headed this way," he hissed, scrabbling away from the wall. "Scram!"

Four pairs of feet pulled away from the alleyway exit. The last pair, belonging to a certain blond-haired, smug gent known as Mutt, refused to budge.

"Mutt, what're you –"

"Shhhhhhh!" Mutt said, pulling out his baseball bat. He drew himself into a pose and faced the exit. "I'm huntin' ADVENT."

Barry could hear the sounds of conversation grow louder and louder, nearing the alleyway. Footsteps trampled the soft snow.

Mutt straightened up, took a breath, and then swung.

Something hit the pavement with a wet smack. Mutt reoriented himself, and then swung again. Someone grunted in pain, before falling flat on their back.

Mutt cocked his head into the street and took a few steps out of the alleyway. Then, he brought down his bat a few more times. Meaty whacks resounded in the alleyway, followed by a low moans of pain.

Mutt finally returned, with the unconscious, bleeding bodies of the hapless janitors he'd just ambushed dragging behind him.

"You – you didn't have to beat the shit out of them!" Banks said.

Mutt spat in the snow. "They're fiiiiine," he reassured. "Just out cold fer a bit. Won't get in our way fer a nice while."

Petrov nodded. "Good choice for once, boss."

Mutt hooked his baseball bat onto his back once more.

"Aight, it's Commandin' time!" he announced. "Here's the plan – we'll sneak past security, hit the statute, run, and pray to God that Shi and the fellas are keeping 'em busy. Sound good?"

The others nodded. Mutt stood, and darted forward into the street. Petrov and Banks lunged forward, keeping pace with him.

Zip's ears jutted up in confusion. "Prayer? There's no time for that, silly."

"Eh, it's just an expression, Zip," Barry said, unpacking his grenade launcher and rifle. "Don't take it literally."

Zip placed a finger against her mouth. "Ex-pres-shun?"

Barry finished latching his grenade launcher to his back, and then turned towards Zip with a fond smile on his face.

"Don't worry yourself too much," he said. "Just follow my lead, and we'll be fine. 'Kay?" He extended a hand out towards Zip.

"'Kay!" she chirped, bouncing up and ignoring the proffered hand.

Pretty soon, the two of them had caught up with the main group. At this point, the empty boulevard had widened out and reached a nexus of sorts. Low-lying fences blocked off the street, confirming Mutt's suspicion that it was a parade ground.

Outside, the Monument to Unification loomed over them, its austere golden arms pointed towards space. People milled about the base of the statue like ants, posing by it and snapping pictures. Interspersed amongst the crowd, Barry saw the unmistakable shape of Advent troopers.

"That's not all of them," Petrov said.

"Hm?" said Mutt.

Petrov shook his head. "I count only eight soldiers. Enough for two combat squads, not three. Where's the third?"

"Huh," Banks breathed. "Rusky's right." He turned to Mutt. "Should we wait for them to show up?"

Mutt clicked his teeth and looked to the sky.

"Nah," he said. "Shi and the others are probably runnin' distraction action out there. Can't waste opportunity."

He regarded the other fighters.

"We'll gel with the crowd a bit and go loud 'fore they catch us. Whose got the stuff?"

Barry rummaged in his pocket, withdrawing the item Bradford had given him.

"Right here, boss," he said, grinning from ear to ear. In his right hand was the aptly named "X-4", a plastic explosive in the shape of XCOM's logo. Talk about poetic justice.

Mutt nodded in Barry's direction. "Good. Keep 'er safe." Turning to everyone else, he said, "Follow my lead."

Mutt reached over the security fence and hauled himself atop it. He shimmied across the fence's cold surface and attempted to drop back onto the ground. Instead, he slipped and fell flat on his ass. A cry of "Buggah!" escaped Mutt's lips.

"Feh," Petrov said. "Follow this."

The Russian vaulted himself over the fence, his arms rippling with power, and made a calm landing next to Mutt. Zip, Barry, and Banks followed without incident.

"Let's get going!" Zip said. She jumped ahead of the group. "Come on, catch up!" she said, bounding across the snow with the energy of a caffeinated toddler.

As Zip neared the populated streets, she didn't notice the lampposts that dotted the streets, each radiating blood red light. In her eagerness, her arm brushed against one of these lights for a single moment. In that moment, security systems within the lamppost had picked up her genetic signature, compared it to the existing genetic database of all ADVENT's citizens, found a match, found that the matched citizen in question was currently wanted on charges of treason, and sent a blaring klaxon across the district, as well as a digital message to all Advent personnel in the area.

Alarms screamed in an unholy choir as Zip withdrew her arm. Every head in the pavilion turned towards the commotion. Someone caught a glimpse of the black magnetic pistol strapped to Zip's thigh, causing screams to erupt from the crowds.

The crowds were quick to disperse, making it easier to see the eight extremely pissed off troopers and their guns.

* * *

Claymore slumped against her seat, feeling worn out and stretched like an old rag. Her elerium high had walked out of her head long ago, hurrying off to someplace less depressing.

Pain thrummed in her skull, a rollicking tantrum with no end. But it was no hangover – that too had faded away a couple of hours ago.

No, it was merely the responsibility of command, a prospect that weighed heavily on her like a take-out bag filled with dog shit. Why'd Bradford have to go on the operation himself? And why didn't he have anyone else who could do this?

Those were the questions that she'd shot at the Central Officer the night prior to Gatecrasher. Central had waved off the concerns, mumbling on about how she was "relatable" to the troops, as well as the most experienced soldier on board.

The amount of confidence Bradford placed in Claymore's past experience showed how little he actually knew.

She actually hoped that Bradford would lay her off after this. That he'd find his "Commander" and let Claymore fuck off. Go back to caring about her elerium stash and whether she'd see another sunrise.

Her previous encounter with Shen Jr. hadn't helped either. Actually, it'd been a massive fucking letdown. Now, not only did Claymore feel unprepared, but she also felt completely out of place – like she'd been dropped in her old cell again, Plexiglas doorway and all.

Something clattered to her left against the Avenger's consoles. Claymore heaved herself over, and spotted a technician in a grey jumpsuit right next to her, holding two steaming mugs of coffee. A feeling of renewal forced itself into her bones, and a sensation close to arousal lit up her cheeks. The technician didn't look half bad either.

"Here," the man said, leaving one mug on Claymore's console. "You'll need it for the operation."

"Oh," Claymore replied. The man's voice was smooth, but not slick. Along with the coffee, he looked and sounded like a businessman, off work to hand a coworker some refreshment. "Thanks."

"Just making sure you operate at 100 percent efficiency, ma'am," the man said. "You're leading the mission after all."

"Don't remind me," Claymore said. She lifted the mug to her lips, feeling her eyelids shutter open as the coffee trickled down her gullet. "I've got the lives of ten people in my hands. I'm like a fucking soccer mom."

"Well – on the bright side, you'll get some parenting experience in," the man joked.

"Real funny," Claymore said, humoring him back. "You the ship's comedian?"

The man thought for a second, and then shrugged his shoulders. "More like a morale booster. I'm supposed to be a navigator for the Avenger but", he gestured at the room around him. "We haven't done much flying."

"You pilot this damn thing?" Claymore asked.

"I give directions," the man replied. "Central Officer Bradford does the flying." The man sighed, clearly disappointed about that fact.

The man cleared his throat. "Uh, apologies. I'm Nguyen. Technician Jeff Nguyen. I realize you probably haven't noticed me because you got – well, _commanding_ to do."

"If running my ass off and suckering a bunch of folks into joining a terrorist group is commanding, then this must be the easiest damn job in the world!" Claymore declared.

"Not exactly the most accurate of statements," Nguyen said. "But whatever floats your boat, 'Commander Claymore'."

Claymore couldn't help cracking a smile at that. "That's – that's pretty good," she said.

"What?" Nguyen asked, eyebrows raised.

Claymore rose from her seat and pointed at the man. "Nguyen. _Nguyen_." She snapped her fingers, then spoke up again. " _'Mr._ Nguyen' – that's what I'm calling you from now on!"

Mr. Nguyen pursed his lips. "I'm… flattered?"

"Not the most creative", Claymore said, grinning. "But it works, just like Commander Claymore."

"Okaay… I'll just call you 'CC'," Mr. Nguyen replied, adding a little chuckle for emphasis. "Less of a mouthful that way, right?"

Claymore leaned back in her seat, the weight on her head easing up. It was only a slight dab of relaxation, a cool spot amidst the raging furnace of consternation pent up inside of her, but it was relaxation nonetheless.

"Great talk, Mr. Nguyen," she said. "Real good. And, Jesus Christ, that coffee's amazing. Where'd you get it?"

"Well, I –"

Mr. Nguyen's pleasant voice, like all good things on Earth, was cut short by an alarm. One of the screens near Claymore exploded with activity, its display shining like a nightclub.

Claymore scooted over.

"Sorry," she muttered, sliding on a headset. As the headphones smothered her ears, she added: "Thanks."

"Glad to be helpful," Mr. Nguyen said, before the rest of his voice became muffled and incomprehensible.

Claymore ignored the man's departure, instead leaning towards the screen.

 _Now, just what have you all gotten yourselves into?_ She wondered, scanning the scene.

* * *

"Move, move!" barked Mutt, waving in the air. He pressed forward before sliding against a billboard.

Zip was backpedaling away from the monument, her arms wriggling about as she tried to tear her pistol from its holster. Shouts and alarms filled the air about her.

"Fucking hell, move!" said Petrov, bringing out his rifle. He knocked Barry's shoulder forward, and the two of them moved to cover the Chinese girl.

Petrov maneuvered between the troopers and Zip, his rifle pointed forward.

"Back up!" he roared, spraying bullets in all directions. The Advent troopers scattered, and began to return fire.

Barry popped up next to Zip, rifle also at the ready. "Hi," he said, waving.

Zip shouted and nearly leaped into the air, but Barry grabbed her by the arm.

"Yeah yeah, glad to see me, I know," he said, dragging her. "Let's find someplace less public to do this."

He pushed her underneath one of the smaller statues that littered the area, before rolling next to her. "Having fun?" he asked.

Zip merely glanced back at him, her eyes bugging out like those of a crack addict.

He patted her shoulder. "Good sport," he said. He turned away from Zip and surveyed the battlefield.

Petrov had, amazingly, found a piece of cover that was big enough to cover his meaty frame. It was a tight fit, with magnetically propelled rounds missing him by centimeters. Currently, he was busy eating through his ammo supply. Every bit of cover or structure between him and the monument was pockmarked with bullet holes, while the Advent troopers hunkered down. A few of them tried to fire back, but the constant stream of death being projected towards them caused their shots to fly into the stratosphere.

 _Brzzzt!_

Barry tugged at his ear. He must've gotten hit with a concussion or something – his right ear was buzzing.

" _Brrzz –_ Hey. HEY! Anyone still alive down there?!"

Barry blinked. Now someone was talking in his ear. Did he drink too much this morning?

"Mutt – alive and well, Miss Claymore!"

"Zip here! Oooh, it works!"

"That's good," said the voice, who Barry assumed was Claymore at this point. "What about Barry, Banks, and Petrov?"

"Uh… I'm here?" Barry said. He looked behind him to see Banks crouch walking towards his position. "Banks is pissing his pants right now."

"Reading you," Claymore replied. "Command is online. We're trying to figure out how to get you out of this clusterfuck."

" _Da_ , hurry. I'm running out of fucking ammo," Petrov shouted.

"Got you, Petrov," Claymore said. "Barry, you got grenades on you?"

"Yeah," Barry said, raising his voice to be heard over the gunfire.

"Good. Lob a few of them at the troopers gathering near the benches. You, Petrov, and Banks will keep them pinned, while Zip and Mutt will go for a flanking maneuver."

"Flank what?"

"Just – Just go around them. Aim for their backside, Zip."

"Oooh – Awesome!"

"Barry?"

"Way ahead of you," Barry replied. His hand was already slotting explosive ordnance into the throat of his grenade launcher. He leaned out from behind his cover, and lobbed the grenade at the nearest group of Advent.

The explosive danced and skittered along the white ground, before slamming against a park bench.

"Grenade!" a male trooper screamed, backing away in an attempt to get out of the blast zone. The grenade went off mid-sentence, dissolving the bench and throwing the troopers to the floor.

Barry didn't stop there. He turned a few degrees, and then sent a second gift towards another group of troopers who were slowly advancing. Three more bodies were thrown into the air, flailing about like black beetles.

"Ya see that!" Mutt yelled in the comm.

" _Da_ ," Petrov said. "But no damage. Shoot them!"

Petrov was right. The troopers were recovering, looking spry and ready as ever. The worst damage Barry had done was knocking their shoulder pads off.

"Open fire boys!" Mutt roared over the comms. The sound of four rifles and one pistol underscored that comment. Gunpowder and heat exhaust filled the once pristine air.

Mutt and Banks both scored a kill, their bullets catching a single trooper in a crossfire. Although the trooper's armor was tough, the combined firepower managed to crack it. He jiggered around like a marionette on the strings of an epileptic puppeteer for a few seconds, before he collapsed in a smoking heap.

Petrov managed, with remarkable accuracy, to hit another trooper in the neck. Her jugular burst like a water balloon, a waterfall of blood staining the front of her uniform a deep shade of cranberry.

The rest had already scrambled into new cover by the time the fighters could get their guns on them. Zip was able to score a glancing hit on one, with her magnetic pistol tearing a chunk out of the trooper's leg.

"Keep them down, Barry," Claymore ordered through the comms. "That red one's trying to rally them!"

Barry followed Claymore's direction, and popped another grenade over there. The sight of smoke and the sound of screams let him know he'd been successful.

"They're disoriented!" Claymore shouted. "Move in!"

"Kill 'em all!" screamed Mutt. A chorus of gunfire accompanied his exclamation.

Barry packed up his grenade launcher and charged forward, staying low. Petrov, Mutt, and Zip were well ahead of him, dashing towards the Advent troopers.

As gunfire rang in the distance, Barry turned and slid against a black obelisk that jutted from the ground. He grinned, and then popped out, weapon raised.

" _DAS VEDANYA!_ " he hollered, opening fire on the dumbfounded Advent trooper in front of him. Most of his bullets bounced off of her tough carapace, but he managed to get a few in her face. The trooper let loose a dying groan and collapsed backward, rivers of blood leaking from her helmet.

Barry grin, suffused with adrenaline and battle lust. His finger tugged eagerly at the trigger, ready to loose lead death everywhere.

Movement registered to his right, and he swiveled, screeching a battle cry.

He turned to face another trooper, who had his back against the obelisk. The trooper wasn't firing back – instead, both of his hands were on his thigh, framing the horrific, charred wound he'd suffered at the hands of Zip's mag pistol. A grunt of pain escaped his lips. He didn't even notice the XCOM operative standing above him, or the gun barrel pointed inches away at his face.

Barry's grin faltered, and he felt his combat high slip away from him. The trooper, despite being a bloodthirsty killing machine, looked pitiable now – like a puppy with its legs broken, or one of those poor orphan kids Barry always saw groveling in the muddied streets of the settlements. This wasn't a fighter Barry was facing – he was just a man. A man with a really, really fucked up leg.

Barry couldn't simply shoot the man. It didn't feel… right. Instead, he did something else. He talked.

He leaned up close against the trooper, until he was level with where he assumed the trooper's ears were. It was hard to tell with those goddamn helmets they wore.

"Eh, buddy?" he whispered. "Kind of an, uh, awkward situation here. I'll just – " Barry gulped. "I'll just make it quick, 'kay? Don't worry 'bout your thigh, aight?"

The trooper only moaned in reply, his fingers still firmly wrapped around the bullet wound.

Barry hefted his rifle, and jabbed the barrel at the trooper. His finger, eager to kill a few seconds ago, now touched the trigger with a ginger caress.

"Alright, I'm gonna –"

A scream cut through Barry's head, causing him to lose concentration. His finger choked the trigger out of instinct, cutting the trooper's life short.

Barry rose from his bloody handiwork, and wrapped a hand around his head.

"What the fuck was that?!" he shouted.

" _Blin_! Banks get the fuck up!" Petrov yelled.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" Claymore hollered, her voice rivaling Petrov's.

"The hell's going on?" Barry shouted again, jogging forward towards the monument.

"Mutt's down – fuckin' dead!" Petrov roared. The chatter of gunfire, followed by the more ominous sound of a magnetic rifle discharging, interrupted him. Then: "Banks is fucking shitting himself!"

"Who got Mutt?" Barry yelled, his voice raw and slick with dread.

"Fucking _cyka_ with red armor!" Petrov screamed. "He's got us pinned!"

"Got it," Barry said. "I'll move in and get that son of a bitch."

He moved forward, and spotted Banks. The Canadian was huddled up against a bench, hyperventilating, his rifle lying at his feet.

Barry moved up next to him and grabbed him by the shoulder.

"Yo, what's happening? I thought we had them on the ropes!" he said.

"Holy shit, holy shit," breathed Banks. His breath was high and ragged, chugging like a freight train. "Jesus fuckin' Christ, we're gonna die!"

Barry whacked Banks in the face. "Snap out of it!" he said, gritting his teeth. Grabbing Banks's rifle, he said, "Here, take this and shoot somebody!"

Banks took the rifle from Barry, but he only cradled it against his body like a safety blanket. "Oh God, oh God…" he whimpered, chewing his lower lip. He scrunched up closer to the bench, his eyes flitting back and forth.

Barry looked away from his pants-shitting companion and looked at how the others were doing. The first thing he noticed was Mutt's body, lying in the street. A single shot had decapitated him, tearing off his boisterous, blond-haired features and leaving only a bloody stump.

Absolutely fucking wrong.

He eyed the remaining Advent troopers: around three of them – two regular grunts, and the beefy son of a bitch who had killed Mutt. Barry's neck tensed at the sight of him.

Said trooper was the pinnacle of arrogant assholery, clad in blood red armor with this shitty little cape flowing behind him. He was growling into a communicator, probably calling for reinforcements. But when Zip managed to flank their position and drill a magnetic round through the head of one of the troopers, he finally looked up, lips fixed in a vicious snarl. Grunting, he hefted his rifle and stormed out into the open.

Seeing the opportunity, Petrov rattled off a few shots at the red trooper. The bullets hit home, sending up showers of sparks.

Unfortunately, the blocky red figure barely stumbled. Besides a few distortions on his once pristine armor, the trooper was no worse for wear. He continued to walk through the open, pinning everyone down with gunfire.

"Fuck!" Petrov yelled, dropping to the floor. "That goddamn _cyka's_ built like a wall!"

Rage boiled inside Barry at the sight of this boss killing motherfucker strutting through the streets, like he owned the damn place. The fact that the Advent trooper likely did own the district they were fighting in didn't occur to Barry – only the satisfying thought of vengeance.

Abandoning all common sense, Barry leaped up and sprinted towards the trooper. He only stopped for a moment to relieve Mutt's corpse of its baseball bat before resuming the charge.

The trooper stopped for a second, caught off guard by the sight of the skinny Ukrainian charging him with a silver baseball bat. In a second, though, he was firing, wild shots smacking into the ground around Barry's feet. Fragments of pavement showered the Ukrainian's shins, while the trooper tried desperately to recalibrate his targeting module before the fighter could reach him.

In one smooth, photogenic leap, Barry lunged towards the trooper. The baseball bat flew in a smooth, glorious arc, slicing through the air like the wings of a hawk, before crunching unceremoniously into the trooper's cranium.

The trooper stumbled back under the manic assault, but Barry kept going. He hammered away like a butcher, tenderizing the trooper's face. His helmet crunched like cheap plastic, caving in under the vicious blows.

The other trooper, still behind cover, moved out to defend his superior, but Petrov put him down will a well-timed burst of fire, allowing Barry to continue reshaping the trooper's face without interruption.

"Fuck!" Barry screamed, timing his shouts with the blows. "You! Fuck! Advent!"

The trooper replied with a low grunt, before Barry bashed him in the front of his face with the back of his baseball bat. He moved back, watching the red-clad soldier walk about unsteadily, before falling on his back.

Silence reigned on the battlefield.

"Holy shit," murmured Claymore. "That was –"

"Fuck," Petrov said, rising wearily from his hiding place.

"Uhm… Anyway," Claymore said, trying to restore order. "Avenger's crew is telling me that we'll probably need some corpses to take home. Once you plant the X-4, grab any corpse you can before Firebrand shows up."

Barry turned around, the baseball bat dragging behind him.

"We take Mutt with us too," he said. "That isn't a question."

"Uh, sure," Claymore said. "Whatever you want, Barry."

While the other fighters turned to coax Banks from his panic, as well as to salvage anything they could from the bodies, Barry turned towards the monument.

It loomed over him, arrogant and powerful, like it didn't give a damn about what had just happened.

Barry gritted his teeth. That was the aliens, alright. Unmoving, like fucking brick walls, to anything going around them. Almost like they were laughing at the pitiful little insurgents and their losses, things too insignificant for their eyes. Well, Barry wasn't going to let them swallow their satisfaction. After today, he wanted to see them react.

He wanted to see them scream.

He slapped the X-4 against the base of the monument, inputting the detonation code with a vicious vindication. Then, he began to walk back, waiting for the charge to detonate.

"Charge is set," Claymore said in his ear. "Petrov, you're in charge now. Signal for an evac – Firebrand will be there in a few minutes."

"Got it," Petrov said.

Barry finally approached the rest of the group, who had finished their preparations. Petrov had Mutt's headless body slung over his shoulder, a grim look of resignation on his face, while Banks and Zip were propping up two dead Advent troopers. Petrov, seeing Barry, looked up and nodded.

"Ready to go?" he said.

Barry nodded back. "Fuck yeah."

Petrov turned and withdrew a flare from his pocket. Then, he threw it a distance away from the monument, where it exploded into a circle of blue lights.

Barry lowered himself to the ground, wrapping his arms around the body of the red armored Advent trooper. The moment he rose, though, he felt antsy. It was a bit quiet – Shi and the others couldn't have distracted EVERY patrol in Novgorod for this long. Shouldn't there be some reinforcements by now?

In a second, Barry immediately regretted asking that question. Pain suddenly blossomed in his shoulder, a hot sensation that was followed by the smell of burnt flesh and melted Kevlar.

"Barry!" screamed Petrov, reaching out with one hand. Everything went dark after that.

* * *

Banks froze, watching as Barry felt to the ground. It was fucking unreal – this entire day had been. First, he had watched a man get his fucking head blown off in the middle of battle – like, he'd been skipping around, fine as a daisy, before, and then – bam! – he was just this hunk of bleeding meat on the floor.

Now, some green shit had come out of nowhere and tagged the Ukrainian in the back. Looking behind Barry, Banks felt like breaking down.

Reinforcements had arrived, in the form of two Advent troopers, and some ugly, shriveled up pink thing. The thing chattered and screeched at the group, before dodging behind some cover. The troopers split too, firing at the group.

"Move, _zadrotas_!" Petrov screamed. "Zip, grab Barry – Banks, grab the red thing!"

The two of them did as Petrov ordered, and, without looking back, began running towards the evacuation flares. Gunfire screeched over their heads, and Banks hoped against hope that he wouldn't feel the warmth of a magnetic round drilling into his back.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" he whispered, adjusting the heavy body that was slung over his shoulder. His feet slammed against the pavement, legs and tendons pumping hard to get him farther and farther from the nightmare behind him.

A little relief fluttered in his breast when he saw the familiar shape of the Skyranger shoot through the sky. Like some angel of salvation, the craft hovered over the drop point, letting down three ropes for the fighters to climb up.

Petrov and Zip had already made their way there, each of them grasping the ropes. Looking to Banks, Petrov motioned with one hand for the Canadian to hustle his ass.

Banks gladly hustled, his arm outstretched towards the dangling rope. When his fingers felt that corded nylon, he felt like he could cry.

Things didn't get better, however. As soon as Banks touched the rope, he felt something touch his mind. Not touch, really – more like fucking grasp it. It was like some tentacle had dragged itself from the depths of a cold, unseen sea and wrapped itself around his brain.

Panic surged in Banks's body, and he could taste bile in his mouth. An unnatural choir of screams plugged his ears, while an image of Mutt's headless, bleeding body was superimposed across his corneas. The grip around his mind tightened, squeezing his grey matter dry. The pain was intense, rocking throughout his body like a lightning bolt.

 _SUBMIT_

Came the word, flashing through the tornado of sound that swirled through his eardrums. It was a tidal wave of mental force. Banks let out a desperate yelp, feeling his fingers, slowly but surely, lose their hold of the rope.

Then, he felt a strong grip on his arm. His vision cleared, just enough to see Petrov, the bulky Russian, gripping Banks's arm with enough pressure to cut off blood flow. Banks, fully in control of his senses, happily tightened his grip on the rope.

Then, the ropes went up, shooting into the sky like bullets. The landscape of the Advent Megacity shrank as the Skyranger retreated into the air. Banks felt his eyelids grow heavy, a tired smile creasing across his face.

As he shot one last glance at the burning battleground, his heart went to ice once more.

Below, the pink _thing_ was staring at him. Its unblinking, oily eyes traced his escape, while a bony grin was pasted over its emaciated features.

He saw it stretch one lanky arm towards the ship, and he swore it was pointing its long, ivory talons at him.

 _Good try_ it seemed to say. _But we'll see you again soon, Banks_.


	8. Gatecrasher Pt 5 - The Finale

**9:00 AM**

Matilda rolled her eyes when she heard Claymore advise Squad Menace to "hold their position".

"Right," she grumbled, leaning her head against the apartment wall. She edged closer to the window, taking care to avoid the faint shaft of sunlight that penetrated the glass panes.

Taking a deep breath, she peeked out the window. Her eyes were greeted with a collage of black and red.

Yep. They were still there.

The police cars and vans that had initially pursued them hadn't moved. They only lay on the asphalt road, engines rumbling with a low, predatory purr.

Additional vehicles had joined as well, clogging the driveway. Even the sky was abuzz with activity, as black, angular transports of some type floated above ground and circled the apartment complex.

Matilda drew back before anyone could get a bead on her. She sank to the floor, against the synthetic carpet.

Well, if they weren't cornered before, they sure as hell were now.

Matilda breathed out, wondering how their mission could have gone so successfully, yet turned into this mess.

Miguel had started it off, then…

No. She couldn't think about Miguel. Not normally, anyway. Instead of his frizzy hair, his love of motorcycles, Matilda could only remember his body. How the magnetic cannons had pounded it until it looked like a t-shirt stuffed with shredded pastrami.

After that…

The robots. Everything would have gone fine if they hadn't run into those goddamn robots. Those big, bullet-retardant things weren't part of the mission briefing, but then again, that went for everything else.

The door creaked open, and Matilda lifted her head up.

"Shi wants to see you in the common room," Mrs. Sycamore said.

Matilda nodded, and stood.

"You good?" she asked the old woman.

Mrs. Sycamore gave a small grin. "As good as any old woman in a warzone can be, love." Despite the affirmation, Matilda didn't see her features soften. Her eyes still rolled about, twitching left and right.

Nobody was feeling good today.

Matilda walked into the common room, and did her best to keep her face neutral. It was hard to, especially with the corpses staring up at her from the carpeted floor.

Shi stood in the center of the room, his graying hair and stern expression making him as lifeless as a rock. He "woke up" when Matilda walked in, turning and greeting her.

"Operative Fournier, status?"

"They're still out there."

Shi lifted an eyebrow.

Matilda sighed. "They're still out there, _sir_."

Shi's nostrils flared as he exhaled.

"Operative Fournier," he said. "Speaking candidly, I don't give a shit about what pronoun you refer to me as. I'm more interested in exactly _who_ is 'still out here', and how _many_ of them there are."

"Who cares?" Matilda snorted. "There's Advent out there, and they want to kill us. Do the specifics really matter?"

Shi's face stretched out into something that barely met the universal standards of a smile.

"Operative, care to explain why you are displaying such… uncharacteristic impertinence right now?"

Matilda sneered. "Did I hear right? You want to _actually_ hear me out? Wow, what a first!"

"Perhaps I am too generous right now," Shi said. "You seem to not care about the mission, or the objective at all."

"You're right!" Matilda said. "I don't care. Especially since caring about the mission is what apparently _got_ us into this mess in the first place."

"You are aware of this mission's importance, Operative?" Shi asked. "It is –"

"Very important," Matilda replied, cutting him off. "Yeah, I remember the briefing. I also remember that part where Central told us not to 'stay too long', and that we're supposed to be a distraction, not a suicide squad. Or were those not important enough for you to remember?"

"Operative, you are way out of –"

"In fact, I'm thinking we should've picked someone else. Y'know, to lead the squad? Someone who would've called for evac instead of taking one of the admins hostage and running halfway across the whole _fucking_ city to off another target!"

Matilda stopped a moment to breathe, and then smiled at Shi.

"That good enough? You wanted to hear me out."

There was silence. Then the soft sound of clapping.

"What a lovely show," said a female voice. Matilda shifted her head and saw the hostage, sitting behind Shi.

"I'm glad I lived long enough to be afforded this sight," Artemis said. Her hair was in disarray, with blood caking her face. One eye was swollen shut, but the rest of her face was a mask of serenity. "At least I can go to my grave knowing that your insurgency is doomed to fail," she continued.

Shi swung around as the last syllable left her lips, unhooking his rifle and laying across her face with it. Globs of blood pattered against the carpet, followed by the clacking sound of a tooth.

"Did I ask you to speak?" he growled, a low, deadly sound.

Artemis didn't reply. She only coughed, with a low moan crawling from her throat.

Mrs. Sycamore ran up beside Matilda and called to Shi.

"Sir? I'd hold off this time. We're running out of hostages, you know."

She gestured to the bodies on the floor.

Shi turned again, locking eyes with Mrs. Sycamore. Finally, he dropped his rifle, and moved away from the chair.

"Huh," Matilda said. "Interesting. Y'know, there used to be three others here –"

"Shut. Up," Shi grunted. He sauntered up until he faced Matilda, face to face. "The only thing keeping me from shooting you for insubordination," he whispered, "is that I don't have any other competent fighters on hand. Remember that."

"Yeah, I'll also make sure to remember that your breath smells like shit," Matilda replied.

She almost giggled when she saw a vein pop on Shi's forehead.

Before anything else could occur, the door swung upon behind her.

" _S-señor_?" came Patricia's voice. "They're – they're trying to get through the front door."

The girl looked terrible to Matilda. And she'd seen some things in her medical career. To her, this girl looked like she'd been through a hellish mix of Vietnam, Normandy, and Shiloh.

"Hm?" Shi said. "How many?"

"A team…" Patricia gulped. " _Cuatro_ – I mean! Four!"

"Any Captains?"

Patricia shook her head like a ragdoll having its neck wrung. Nervous jitters racked her body, making her look boneless. Frail.

Shi nodded, slowly, and grinned.

"That makes things easier then," he said, before turning to everyone else. "Operatives, I'm taking the hostage. Get your things together and meet me by the stairwell, ASAP. Clear?"

Everyone nodded.

Soon, they were all near the entrance to the stairwell. Shi was waiting for them. He had one arm around Artemis's neck, and the other holding a pistol.

"We need to make this quick," Shi said. "I've already radioed to Firebrand, and she's coming in for a quick extract on the roof of the apartment. However, we're going to have to climb several flights of stairs to make it in time. That means we'll have to hold out for five minutes."

"Uh, sir," Mrs. Sycamore said. "Won't it take at least three minutes for the Advent to reach us?"

Shi kicked open the door, and Matilda felt her stomach grow nauseous when he said: "We can make breathing room. But only if we have a distraction."

Oh well. Matilda didn't really have any regrets. And if those stupid stories about Heaven happened to be true after all, maybe she'd see her brother again.

Oh wait, she realized. I'm definitely not going there.

Shi raised his pistol, and Matilda tensed, expecting the decision to fall on her.

It didn't. Instead, the pistol was pointed at Patricia.

"What?" Matilda exclaimed, the words flying out of her mouth. "What?!" Mrs. Sycamore, to her credit, raised her eyebrows at this.

"Patricia, you must cover our retreat," Shi said. "It is necessary for the success of the mission."

The Spanish girl began to shake even harder, her rifle shuddering between her thin arms before clattering against the floor. Her breath became ragged and heavy, but she didn't utter a single word.

"Sir!" Matilda protested. "Not her! I am very willing to –"

"Not you," Shi grunted, waving his pistol at Matilda. "It has to be her." He began to step into the stairwell. "Patricia, do what you must to hold them. We will –"

He stumbled back as Patricia let out a wail of grief and threw herself at Shi. Matilda moved back as well, watching as Patricia tried to wedge herself into the doorway.

" _Pendejo_! _Bastardo!"_ she screamed, clawing at Shi. " _Monstruo!_ " Artemis's eyes widened and she bucked, kicking her legs out at the crazed Spaniard.

Shi shoved the administrator to the side before pistol-whipping Patricia. The sound echoed through the hallways, a hollow and wet impact.

Patricia recoiled and hit the carpet, stunned.

"Go!" Shi hissed, moving back to let Matilda and Mrs. Sycamore through.

For a second, both of them hesitated. They looked at each other, as if daring the other to move first. But that wasn't the case. To Matilda, it was like they were sharing a secret. As if Mrs. Sycamore was thinking the same thought.

 _Not right now. We'll make the bastard pay later._

Both of them moved. They slid through the doorway and into the dark, grimy stairwell, before Shi moved forward and slammed the door shut. Then, with his rifle, he wedged it into the door's opening mechanism, jamming it.

He wasn't a moment to soon. The door began to shutter as heavy thuds pounded on it from the other side. Screams and nondescript Spanish rang from the other side.

"Hmph," was all Shi said. "She'll probably give us two minutes at most."

He turned and urged for the other to follow. Matilda and Mrs. Sycamore did, without speaking. The only sounds they made were the heavy thuds their boots made against the steel.

It was only after two flights when Matilda began to speak up again.

"Sir," she said. "I think… I was in better condition to hold off the enemy."

"You may have," Shi said, still climbing the stairs. "But it was for that reason that I didn't want you to sacrifice yourself."

"Reason?" Matilda echoed.

"You are skilled, and competent," he continued. "Even if you do not take orders very well."

Matilda stopped. For the first time, she was surprised at Shi.

"Wait – you're saying that Patricia… that she wasn't _competent_ enough to keep going?"

Shi didn't reply. Instead, he kept going up, machine like, one leg pumping after another.

"Shi, I want an answer."

Shi stopped at a landing, and then turned towards her.

"The world is harsher than it was twenty years ago, Operative," he told Matilda. "And in our line of work, we can only afford to keep those who are fit to live on this earth."

Matilda gaped, at a loss.

"Y-you've gotta be – you have to be kidding me. She lost her brother, Shi. Her fucking _brother_. I didn't pin you to be this – this heartless maniac."

Shi gritted his teeth. "We all have to make sacrifices," he said, keeping his tone even and solemn. "And I am no 'heartless maniac'. My heart is here. It beats for earth and its future." He hefted the hostage. "With her, we can get vital information on Advent. I feel that is worth a few deaths."

"But enough talk," he said, moving forward once more. "We need to move."

Matilda didn't follow him. There was no way in hell she was. In fact, she would've rather stood there for eternity, until the Advent security squads reached her, if Mrs. Sycamore hadn't grasped her shoulder.

"Better get going, dear," she murmured. "If we're going to have any chance of making things right, we'll have to keep moving."

Matilda kept walking forward. But it wasn't long before she heard the gunfire.

"Patricia's gone," Mrs. Sycamore said.

"We need more time," Shi grumbled.

Mrs. Sycamore looked at Matilda.

"Got a grenade for me, love?" she asked. She held up one in her hand. "I'm going to need more than one for this."

Matilda looked at her waist and found two pieces of ordnance hanging from her belt. She unclipped them and held them out.

"Not yet," the old woman said. "Not until I tell you to."

The woman moved past Matilda and went down until she reached a landing. Then, she looked down.

"Oooh boy," she said. "They're mighty close, now aren't they?"

Then, with complete nonchalance, she removed the pin from her grenade. And like a romantic letting a rose fly on the wind, she dropped it. The rotund bringer of death bounced against the sides of the stairwell, rolling step after step until it stopped.

Then it exploded. Mrs. Sycamore stood back, buffeted by smoke. Screams, and the heavy thud of bodies emanated from below.

"I'm going to need one more, dear," Mrs. Sycamore said. "Their armor's a bit too tough for my liking."

Matilda tossed her another grenade, and the process repeated. The pin pulling, the drop, and then the screams.

The only difference this time was the long, metallic groan, followed by the sound of something large shifting and collapsing against the ground.

"Can't go up this way now," Mrs. Sycamore said, nodding at her grim work. "That'll give us a few more minutes." She tottered back up the steps, and nodded at the other two.

"Well, let's keep moving," Mrs. Sycamore.

It was a good thirty seconds before the group reached the top. Shi kicked open the door, and bright morning sun flooded the stairwell. Matilda stumbled, caught off guard by the sudden burst of light.

"Ah, there she is," Shi exclaimed, looking to the left. "Just a few more seconds, and…"

Suddenly, Matilda could make out the extremely low sound of the Skyranger's engines. She walked out of the doorway, and came face to face with the craft, hovering only a few feet above her. Shi was gesturing to the pilot, positioning the administrator so that the pilot could see her. In response, three ropes slithered out of the Skyranger, landing against the edge of the roof.

Shi turned to the others. "Let's move quickly," he ordered.

He moved towards one of the ropes, and latched a hand around one. Matilda followed him, despite the sick feeling building up inside her. She didn't want to follow this man at all, let alone be near him. But what choice did she have?

"Operative Sycamore, what are you doing?" Shi shouted. "We need to get going!"

"Hm?" Mrs. Sycamore said. She was going slow, moving step by step towards the Skyranger. "Sorry, sir. Was just, um, ruminating on some of things you've said."

"You can think on board the Avenger!" Shi scolded. "There's no time for this!"

"Oh, but there is!" Mrs. Sycamore said. She hefted her shotgun as she approached Shi. "It's very important. You said something about our line of work –"

Her eyes lit up, and she pointed the shotgun at Shi.

"And it's quite true."

Matilda could barely hear the _fwump_ of the shotgun. Instead, she only saw Shi's neck snap back, gouts of blood spraying from his and the administrator's ruined chests. Both of them hung in the air for only a second, before they slipped, together, off the side of the roof and fell. Matilda thought she could hear their bodies slam into the pavement.

She looked, numb, at Mrs. Sycamore. The old woman was grabbing her rope, almost oblivious to the act she had just committed.

"I really do agree with Mr. Shi," Mrs. Sycamore told Matilda, as the ropes carried them up to safety. "We only can afford to keep those who are fit to live on this Earth."


	9. Surprise, Surprise

Claymore turned away from the monitor.

"Shit," Mr. Nguyen pronounced. "That was –"

"Impressive," Claymore finished. "And somehow more dramatic than anything cable television could put out twenty years ago."

She blinked, trying to clear away the stinging haze that had covered her eyes.

"You okay, CC?" Mr. Nguyen said. "Your eyes are red."

"Fucking hell," Claymore grumbled. "Haven't stared at a screen in ages." She blinked, letting a few tears squeeze their way out of her eyelids. There.

"Anyway, I'm not doing this anymore. Bradford got what he came for."

Mr. Nguyen grinned at that. "Very exciting!" he said. "I haven't seen the Commander in ages."

"Yeah," Claymore said. "You know where they're keeping her?"

"Last I saw, they went to the operating room, in the labs. But I don't think Bradford and Dr. Tygan want to be –"

But Claymore was already up.

"No worries, Mr. Nguyen," Claymore said. "I've got a report to hand in anyway."

She moved away and walked out of the command center. The harsh light of the hallways greeted her, giving her corneas more unnecessary grief.

However, Claymore liked these hallways. They were empty, devoid of people or noise. The air was light, skimming off the surface of her skin instead of bearing down on it. If she closed her eyes, even for a moment, she could almost smell the wastes. Sometimes it was the cloying scent of Saharan dust, or the fresh plants sprouting off the sides of fjords.

She walked deeper into the hallways, absorbing herself in her memories. She could hardly imagine that there was a command center, or even a bar, lying beyond the chrome walls. It was, no pun intended, alien to her.

Finally, she reached the lab. Or, really, the engine room. The resident sawbones and scientist, Dr. Richard Tygan, apparently saw no problem in keeping his laboratory, research files, and operating room next to the five fucking tons of explosive shit that kept the Avenger running.

Right now, it seemed like she had missed the party. The good doctor was the only person left, and he was preoccupied with cleaning some kind of cross between a vibrator and a screwdriver.

"Tygan?" Claymore asked, stepping across the threshold.

"Hm?!" Tygan spurted. His hands crumpled like chloroformed spiders, dropping the device onto the floor. A few oily drops of blood flattened themselves against the metal floor.

"Sorry doc!" Claymore said, racing over and reaching towards the device. "Didn't mean –"

Tygan swooped down. One hand slapped at Claymore's grasping mitts, while the other retrieved the strange device. Claymore recoiled, while the doctor resumed his normal position. He looked Claymore, dead in the eyes, with a blank expression on his face.

"Doc – ?" Claymore began.

"Don't touch this!" he barked, harsh as a Doberman. He blinked, looking almost disgusted by his outburst.

"I – I'm very sorry, Mrs. Claymore," Tygan said. He tapped the device in his hands. "Just overprotective. Wouldn't want _this_ to end up embedded in your forearm."

"It's fine, doc," Claymore huffed. "I just need to find Bradford."

"Commander's Quarters," Tygan replied. Then: "Also, I'm afraid –"

Claymore turned, and began to walk away.

"Yeah, yeah," she said, waving a hand. "Go away, busy working. I get the drill, doc. It's been three weeks."

She fled back into the hallways, while Tygan smacked his lips and began working again, thoughts of XCOM's interim commander the far from his mind.

* * *

As Claymore tramped along the hallways of the Avenger once more, she thought she ought to check on the troops. It wasn't too hard to find some of them. All she had to do was find out where the walls were vibrating, and follow them to the bar.

The walls were quivering a lot more than normal, though. When Claymore pressed a finger to the floor, she felt shakes going up her arm. The floor felt like it had the consistency of Jell-O. Something loud, probably that "Holy Diver" cover that Claymore had found sitting near the liquor cabinet.

She made her way into the bar and frowned. Loud, raucous music was pounding from the bar's surround sound systems, but the bar itself was far from alive. Only two people were there: the big Russian and the Canadian. Currently, the Canadian (Banks, that was it) was passed out against the bar, while the Russian was pouring a glass from the bar's larder.

"Commander," the Russian said. Claymore struggled to remember his name. Peter? A vague jumble of letters bounced around her head, mostly a bunch of p's, v's, and backwards R's.

"Eh… Trooper," Claymore replied. She threw her arm against her forehead and launched it into the air – a sloppy excuse of a salute.

The Russian looked at her funny. Then, he gave her a salute. It was a bit more professional.

"You want a drink, Commander?" he asked Claymore.

"Drink?" Claymore repeated. She teetered against the threshold of the bar, wondering if she ought to accept. Then again…

"You have time," the Russian said, looking down and pouring out the rest of his drink. Brown alcohol carved a snakelike path through the cracks of the ice in the drink. "Central carted up the old woman an hour ago. Something about a coma." He looked up, before shaking the bottle. "More left. You have time."

Claymore shrugged. Maybe she ought to take a little break. She probably deserved _something_ for orchestrating a somewhat successful guerilla ambush.

She took a glass from the Russian and downed it.

"So," she began, a bit of her confidence restored by the liquor. "If you've got anything mean to say, now's the time."

The Russian shook his head. " _Nyet_. You did fine."

"Bringing back six body bags must be an achievement."

"Six? You do yourself wrong," the Russian said. "Two of those were not your fault. Ramirez and Osei were _zadrotas_. Idiots."

The Russian downed his own glass. The sound of the shot cup hitting the bar was crystal clear over the pounding music.

"But I only know of three casualties. Squad Menace had trouble?"

Claymore laughed. "Trouble? That's a fucking understatement. Squad Menace ran into half the goddamn garrison in Novgorod. Two of them were killed by MECs."

"The third?" the Russian asked.

Claymore shrugged, and motioned for more liquor. The Russian obliged her, and she downed another ounce of intoxicating fluid.

"You'd call it friendly fire, but it was more like a fucking execution. I'm probably a pretty shit Commander for allowing two soldiers to kill their own squad leader."

"Shi is dead?" the Russian said.

"Absolutely," Claymore replied. "Dead as my fuckin' liver."

The Russian sighed. "You do yourself wrong."

"Wow, are we still on the pity train to Happy Town? Because if so, I want off."

Claymore felt the Russian' heavy paw fall on her shoulder.

"Listen, Commander," he said. His voice was tough – as unyielding as a piece of alien alloy. "This is war. I have seen war, and it is messy. The best we can do is to win. At all costs. Bradford's squad suffered because their troops could not listen to orders. Squad Menace suffered because we placed an idiot in command. We will adapt and move forward."

The Russian patted Claymore's shoulder.

"Like I say. You are fine, Commander. Just be strong."

Claymore grinned, but without feeling.

"You sound great," she said. "Memorize that. I want you to tell it to my replacement."

"Replacement?" the Russian said.

"Yeah," Claymore said, rising from her seat. "The _actual_ Commander."

* * *

Claymore walked into the Commander's Quarters, prepared to make the greatest first impression this world had ever seen.

"Hey hey, Commander! I know we haven't met, but, boy, I've got some –"

She stopped as a green lump rose up to meet her.

"What the hell are you doing?" Bradford said.

Claymore stopped, suprised. She then noticed that Bradford was looking pretty shit. His eyes were stained red, and his entire body was tensed up like a cornered jungle cat.

"I just –" Claymore stuttered, before she saw the bed.

It was a long, mechanical device. Compared to the sleek design of the room, it was bulky and ugly. Knobs and lights had been placed with haphazard motivation across the length of it.

Cradled in this eyesore of a machine was the frail body of a woman. She appeared to be asleep, eyes shut in a knackered-after-one-too-many-pints kind of way. Her face, framed between tight fringes of black hair, was smooth and severe, with a touch of beauty that almost made Claymore question her sexuality.

"Is that," she asked. "The Commander?"

Bradford nodded, before throwing his ass against his seat.

"Twenty years," he groaned. "Twenty _goddamn_ years!" Bradford slammed a hand against his seat, splintering the wood.

"Okay, what the fuck happened, Sweaters?" Claymore shouted back. Bradford was acting like a kid who just got pushed around at the playground, and that was seriously freaking her out.

Bradford pressed his face into his hands, kneading the folds of his skin.

"The aliens…" he said. "They – did something to her."

"No shit, Sweaters," Claymore said. " _What_ did they do to her?"

"We found a chip," Bradford said, slow and heavy. "Lodged… inside the base of her skull. It had some kind of safeguard in it. When Tygan removed it, the Commander's life signs flatlined."

"Shit," Claymore said.

"We had to put her in an induced coma to save her," Bradford said. "But Tygan has no idea how long she'll have to be in it. He thinks it's going to be indefinite."

That last word was like a massive bitch slap to Claymore. What little strands of confidence she had left broke. The load they'd been holding up, which had been growing ever since she accepted this shitty position, fell onto Claymore's back like a ton of bricks.

"Fuck," was all she could manage. Her hands fell against her sides.

"FUCK!" she said again, louder.

She wished she could run back in the hallways, maybe bash her skull against one of those chrome walls and stay out of all this shit.

She'd been right. She should have never taken this fucking job.


	10. Recuperating

The rumors had spread throughout the rest of the ship once the sun went down. Whispering huddles of techies and engineers became a common sight throughout the Avenger, each of them speculating on this or that theory concerning the Commander's absence. Some claimed that she'd been transformed into an alien and had to be put down. Another joker said that she had "ascended to godhood", and was prepared to bring fire and brimstone in a new Apocalypse.

None of the troops were bothered by this news. It didn't really concern any of them. They were hired guns, not professional mourners. They were also preoccupied with their own bodies to bury.

The ceremony occurred in the bar, with a grand attendance of three: Mrs. Sycamore, Petrov, and Matilda. Mrs. Sycamore and Matilda each carried a photo of one of the Rivera twins, while Petrov held onto a crumpled snapshot of Mutt.

Petrov inserted the photograph into one of the steel memorial frames. It didn't help that Mutt was staring right back at him, flashing that feel-good grin of his. Petrov, although he would never admit it out loud, had been an addict for those moments, and now he'd lost his fix.

" _Ya po tebe skuchayu,_ " Petrov said. He pressed a hand against what was left of his friend.

Mrs. Sycamore and Matilda repeated the process, placing the pictures of the Rivera twins next to Mutt's. Unlike Mutt's, these were clean and crisp ID photos, the ones that every soldier took upon recruitment into XCOM.

The two photos seemed more appropriate on a mantel or in a bedroom. Matilda could see Miguel's arm lurking in the background of Patricia's photo, with two fingers pointing above her messy hair. The man's own face, mischievous and sly, seemed to confirm that fact. Patricia seemed to be ignoring him, opting to gaze at the camera and smile her heart out.

They topped the rest of the funeral off with a few drinks. Mrs. Sycamore declined, and left early. It was only after a few dozen glasses when somebody spoke up.

"Where's the cat girl?" Petrov asked.

"In her room," Matilda said.

"Why wasn't she here?" Petrov said.

"She's distraught," Matilda replied.

Petrov crossed his arms. "Better be," he said.

Matilda glared at him over her drink, but said nothing. Instead, she tapped at her own glass, gazing into the clear liquid within. It swirled and sloshed, like a cup full of tears. Matilda drank it without hesitation.

"I'm leaving," she declared after a while. She slid her glass over to Petrov and left the bar.

* * *

Mrs. Sycamore had found Zip curled up in her bunk. The Chinese girl's face was buried in a pillow. Her brown cat ears poked up from a sea of messy, jet black hair.

"You all right, dear?" Mrs. Sycamore said.

Zip looked up from her pillow and sniffed a bit. Her face was smooth and straight, a porcelain doll's, notwithstanding her red eyes and tear stained cheeks. Mrs. Sycamore had to stifle a laugh. It was like looking at her teenage self, coming home drenched in tears and sweat after her first romantic failure.

"Yup," Zip said.

Mrs. Sycamore sat on Zip's bed. "Dear, I've had five children. And they're all better liars than you are."

Zip pouted, but allowed Mrs. Sycamore to intrude.

"Whenever you're ready to talk, dear," Mrs. Sycamore said. "I'll be ready."

The two of them were quiet for a bit of time, surrounded by a silence that was punctuated every now and then by sniffles.

"I wanna leave," Zip said at last.

"Any reason why?" Mrs. Sycamore asked.

"I touched the stupid lamppost!" Zip said, rolling back into her bed. "And – and Mutt's dead. And Barry's sick!"

"I see," Mrs. Sycamore said, serene. "So you made a mistake."

"I can't make mistakes!" Zip said. "Never!"

"You're asking the impossible, dear," Mrs. Sycamore said. "In all my years, I've never seen a single –"

"I can't!" Zip repeated. "It's never good! Mistakes put me in the club! Mistakes got me punished by the bosses! Mistakes killed Mutt!"

She turned and looked straight at Mrs. Sycamore, her red-rimmed eyes blazing with otherworldly fury.

"I don't want anyone hurt!" she said, collapsing into Mrs. Sycamore's body. The old woman felt hot tears drip against her lap, while the girl's body shook.

Mrs. Sycamore couldn't think of anything to say. It was better not to say anything, really. She only stroked the girl's hair and patted her back. She closed her eyes, and whispered a prayer for better days.

* * *

Claymore coughed up a wad of coagulated elerium dust and saliva into her napkin, leaving a glowing yellow smear against the white cloth.

"And that's why I'm Commander now," she said. She folded up the napkin and tossed it into a trashcan. It had already been two days since she'd been promoted. Three since Gatecrasher.

Barry nodded as best as he could from his makeshift harness.

"So they had a big party, eh?" Barry said.

"Sort of," Claymore said. "More like I walked on the bridge on day, set off a jewelry store's worth of alarms, and became Supreme Head of the XCOM Project."

"You kinda were before," Barry pointed out.

"Sure," Claymore said. "But it's for real this time. I have to sit here, cooped up in this ship, and give everyone their marching orders. And I mean _everyone_."

"Even the janitor?" Barry said.

"We don't have a janitor," Claymore said.

"Well, fuck," Barry said. "So I was supposed to use those trash things?"

"Obviously," Claymore said. The two of them chuckled – low, murmuring things devoid of sincerity. Each weak for its own reasons.

"Sorry if I'm annoying you," Claymore said. "I mean, I know I'm the 'great leader' of XCOM or some shit like that, but I'm not going to try to throw my weight around. You can be honest with me."

"You're fine, miss," Barry said. "Almost – what's the world? 'Fetching.'"

"You reading a dictionary in your spare time?"

Barry waved a hand and snorted. "Nah, it's just a word I heard before. Y'know, from Mutt…"

He trailed off. His face grew longer, stretching out his features little by little.

"Yeah," Barry muttered. "That was a long time ago."

He and Claymore looked down at the cracked, tiled floors. For Claymore, it was the first time she saw Barry look like this. Subdued, beaten down. Even inside this "hospital", he'd still been _happy_ , for lack of a better word. Happy, even when the only things they had to treat his plasma wound with were a roll of gauze, a needle, and a scratched up bag filled with morphine.

Now? Well, now he looked like a crumpled piece of paper, kicked into the dirt and covered in sneaker tracks and dog piss.

"Claymore?" Barry asked.

Claymore looked up.

"How did you meet him?" Barry asked. "My boss."

"Huh," Claymore said. She leaned back and ran a hand through her red hair. "Now that one was a long-ass time ago.

"I definitely was hitchhiking," she continued. "Ten years after Unification. Got ambushed a week after I hit Europe – trucks, guns, the usual threats, yadda yadda. I was high as a fucking cloud that time, so I killed a good number of them. All of them, I think."

"Shit," Barry said. He grinned, just a little bit.

"Yep," Claymore said, happy for a reaction. "But the problem with being that high off your ass is that you hit the ground pretty hard. After falling unconscious, I woke up in that bunker you all used to live in. Mutt had found me and offered me a place in your little gang."

"I'm guessing you said no," Barry said.

"Sort of," Claymore said. "I said no, but I do try to repay debts. And I figured, well, this Mutt person hasn't raped or killed me yet. And he saved my ass _from_ getting raped and/or killed. So I decided to help you out with some handy intel. Jobs to do, places to hit, things to steal."

"That was you?" Barry exclaimed. "You're the guy Mutt got all his info from?"

"Pretty much," Claymore said. "He was polite. Tried playing the romantic like he was in a shitty soap opera. But his heart was in everything he did – taking care of you two, having fun, whatever. Not the person I expected in the asscrack of the world."

Barry was smiling by now, his head nodding as if he was listening to an addictive pop song.

"Nice," he said.

"Yeah," Claymore agreed. "He was nice." She sniffed, her nose suddenly clogged. The rims of her eyes felt wet.

She shook her head, and reached out. Barry's eyes widened as she grabbed one of his arms and held it against her head.

"I'm sorry," Claymore said. "Jesus Christ, I am."

She squeezed her eyes shut. Tears didn't fall.

"Hey, hey!"

Claymore looked up. Barry was leaning towards her, as far as his harness would allow. His free hand barely scratched her shoulder.

"Sorry's nice and all," he said.

He tightened his grip around Claymore's hand. His tone hardened, and Claymore saw a malevolent glint in his eyes.

"But if you're serious about making up," he said. "About paying debts? Then you kill every one of those bastards. Those fuckers in Advent and their alien bitches. You kill them all. For Mutt, the twins, hell, even for Shi."

Barry let go.

Claymore stared at him for a moment. She wasn't quite sure that this wasn't the elerium fucking with her.

"Alright," she said at last. "That's a debt I can pay."

* * *

Hours later, several things occurred within the Avenger.

Chief Engineer Lily Shen received a large order concerning medical supplies, modified ammunition, explosive ordnance, and guns. She also had approval to begin scouting out some unexplored areas of the Avenger if she could. The whole thing was typed out in a blocky, callous font, and signed to approval by "The Commander".

Dr. Richard Tygan, in the dark confines of his lab, had his scientific inquiries interrupted by a call. Listening to the orders being relayed, he dropped the chip he had been analyzing, and turned his attention to the sound of wheels. Moments later, a cart, with a red-armored body draped across it, was brought in.

There was no grand speech given that day. Instead, every member of the Avenger personnel, from trooper to technician, was given a personal talk with "The Commander". Every one of them came out refreshed and confident.

Claymore felt a tinge of satisfaction over the day's past agenda. She'd successfully fought the tide of emotional and physical exhaustion that had swamped the ship. But was she really prepared to go back into combat again? To take charge and lead orders?

Hell if she knew. But she remembered what Barry said.

She had a debt to pay. Not just to the troops, or XCOM, but to the entire world.


	11. Radicals

Mrs. Sycamore looked up, face bright red from the warmth of her eggs and tea, as the alarms went off. Screeching bursts of sound sprinted from room to room, squeezing through the corridors and blowing unsuspecting eardrums apart.

"All combat personnel, report to Mission Control," boomed the PA system.

"Heavens me," Mrs. Sycamore said, raising a napkin to her face. "They could at least ask politely before rushing us off to our bloody deaths."

Mrs. Sycamore, sadly, had to leave her breakfast unfinished. When she walked into Mission Control, she found herself late. Three other stood at attention in the dim, blue light. Bulky Petrov, petite Zip, and the now-extremely jittery Banks.

Petrov and Zip had gone through a wardrobe change. The Russian wore military fatigues, a swirling pattern like green seaweed and volcanic ash. Pockets, more pockets than Mrs. Sycamore could count, hung from his arms, legs, and chest. The Chinese girl had attempted a whole-hearted imitation of Petrov, wearing a thin, camo t-shirt and olive cargo pants (lots of pockets right there). The mag pistol, black and thick, snuggled against her outer thigh. Banks only wore a pair of aviators.

"G'morning, troops!" Claymore shouted. The four of them looked up and saw XCOM's new commander, minty fresh, jogging down a staircase towards the ground floor.

"Morning!" Zip called, baring her teeth. Banks shook like an overfilled can of soda, and glared at her through his tinted lenses. Petrov nodded. Mrs. Sycamore decided to give a polite wave.

"Well, glad nobody's pissed in your coffee!" Claymore said. "But I'll cut out the pep talk. Right now, we've got a situation." She placed her hands against the hologlobe, fingers flexing as they manipulated it. The holographic projection morphed and shifted until objects formed. Human-sized objects.

There, Mrs. Sycamore could make out a long line of square shapes, some sitting still, others flipped on their sides. Smaller, human-shaped figures scurried back and forth along the flat plain of blue. Every now and then, the area would light up with explosions or small, miniscule flashes.

"What you're looking at right now, is an Advent convoy," Claymore pointed out. "A line of heavily-guarded transports, moving from Stuttgart, Germany, to someplace in France. Destination's not important. The fact that it's absolutely bursting with guns, chow, meds, and material is."

"Someone else made it first," Petrov said.

"Right on the nose, Petrov. A few hours ago, fighters from an unknown faction attacked the convoy, using rockets and old world firearms. They're actually well-equipped, but, as you can see –"

"They're getting whipped," Mrs. Sycamore finished. "And they're prolly crying for help about now."

"You could say that," Claymore said, grinning. "All you need to know is we'll have it _made_ if we pull this off."

The troops nodded, satisfied.

"You said we don't know where they're from," Banks said. "Wh – what if it's a trap? Or they just shoot us on sight?"

"Well, if it's some elaborate fucking trap, Firebrand will land, you'll get your asses out of there, and I'll applaud Advent on their newfound creativity. If not, and they're just a bunch of mean bastards who don't like sharing, then shoot back. Don't shoot first, though, because – well, I shouldn't have to say. Everyone knows that's dumb as shit. Understood?"

Everyone barked an affirmative of some sort. Banks, to his credit, looked a little less shaky. Even Mrs. Sycamore had to admit she felt more comfortable hearing Claymore's familiar, casual tone.

"Good," Claymore said. "Get your gear ready and load up into the Skyranger, quickly!"

A few minutes later, Mrs. Sycamore was snug inside the Skyranger, strapped into her seat and listening to the rhythmic hum of the ship's engines. A shotgun lay in her lap, still covered in the dirt and grime from Operation Gatecrasher. A red ribbon, an untouched, clean strip of crimson across the gun's cut and scratched beige, was wrapped around the barrel. Mrs. Sycamore thought of it partially as a reminder, but mostly as an accessory. A sign, marking it as hers.

Across from her, Petrov and Banks had swapped out their old arms. Petrov had picked up the old saying "Bigger is Better" and carried a bulky minigun. For Banks, "Speak softly and carry a big stick" applied, especially with that enormous sniper rifle he cradled in his arms.

"I'm – I'm staying as far away as possible," Banks had explained. "I'm a good – good shot. I practice on those Advent statues."

The ride was a lot quicker than Mrs. Sycamore expected. The Skyranger touched the ground, and her blood began to boil. Her hands gripped the shotgun, squeezing it, wringing it as if she were preparing a turkey for dinner.

Another opportunity to get payback.

That opportunity, however, got a little complicated. Because as the door of the Skyranger slid down, Mrs. Sycamore was greeted to an absurd sight.

Gunfire rang throughout the air, bullets pinging through a fog of dust and smoke. Figures dodged within the opaque mixture, falling and firing into the distance. But one shape emerged. An Advent Mec, its paint spattered with soot and explosion marks. Its faceplate had fallen off, revealing a black box, lined with wires and tubes.

The Mec leveled its cannon at the Skyranger, but pivoted as something ran at it from the corner.

A man decked out in desert fatigues _tackled_ the killer machine, leaping out with nothing but his fists.

As he pulled the triggers on his explosive vest, the man screamed two words.

"ALLAHU ACKBAR!"

The hoarse shout was swallowed up in an expanding ball of red and orange fury, along with the man and the Mec.

"You-you've got to be fucking kidding m-me," Banks groaned.

* * *

"What do you think, doctors?" Bradford said.

Tygan and Matilda looked up from the examination table.

"It's –" Tygan began.

"Well," Matilda said.

"Interesting," the two of them said, in perfect harmony.

They paused. Matilda rolled her eyes while Tygan turned back towards Bradford.

"I admit, Central, while I had been hoping for at least one specimen to examine after the first operation, this –" He gestured to the body of the Advent Captain, stripped of armor, that lay on top of the table underneath a blue blanket. "– is an excellent find. I must commend the troops for being able to bring back a _Captain_."

"It's an ugly son of a bitch," Matilda said. Bradford, seeing the Captain's bulbous eyes and distorted facial features, had to agree.

"This is new," Bradford said.

"Absolutely," Tygan said. "Previous conflicts with Advent throughout our operating period have only yielded us the bodies of regular Advent soldiers. Each of who, as you know, was purely human, with minimal genetic manipulation. It appears that no expense is spared for those of higher rank."  
Tygan switched on the table's lights.

"While Dr. Fournier and I have not begun to examine the internal structure of the specimen, due to… complications, we have found something equally interesting. Dr. Fournier, if you will?"

Matilda nodded, and produced a chip from her pocket.

"Holy hell," Bradford said. "That's –"

"Almost identical to the one you removed from the Commander," Matilda said. "And with it, we've come a few steps closer to figuring out its purpose."

"Does that mean we could – revive the Commader, Matilda?" Bradford said.

"Call me Dr. _Fournier_ , Central," Matilda said. "And that problem's a bigger mystery than the Bermuda Triangle. Still, we got something else."

She walked over to a nearby monitor and activated it. Plastered on the screen were the two chips, taken from the Commander and the Captain, side by side.

"I was able to recognize the chip we recovered from the Captain," Tygan said. "I actually helped to design it. A theoretical model, but it still has my, well, 'signature' all over it."

"What was it supposed to do?" Bradford asked.

"Supposedly, it was one of the many devices meant to improve our existence. The uses were many – granting communication to the deaf and mute, improving the social impediments caused by mental conditions, and monitoring the vitals of unhealthy individuals. All of it relying on some form of unknown energy, faster than light, that I had never heard of."

"Of course," Matilda interjected. "It never saw medical use."

"Clearly," Tygan said. "As you can see, I was a sucker – born the day before, if you will. Instead of a medical device, the aliens made me inadvertently create a communication grid between the Advent Captains and their subordinates, almost instantaneously. The only mystery is the medium – how are they communicating?"

"Huh," Bradford said. "Explains why attempts to plant spies within their ranks have been unsuccessful."

"And messy," Matilda added.

"Another, more disturbing possibility has been brought up," Tygan said. "That the aliens may have been trying to… _communicate_ with the Commander."

"I'm sure the Commander would have had some choice words for these alien bastards," Bradford said.

"Of course, though not in her current state," Tygan stated. _"_ But I'd have to examine the her chip to come back with a definite answer."

"Got it," Bradford said. "Is that all you have for me?"

Matilda and Tygan looked at each other, then at Bradford.

"There is the –" said Matilda.

"Complication," they both said.

Matilda threw up her hands.

"Alright, I'm done here. I'm getting a drink," she said. She stormed out of the lab.

There was a pause.

"Doctor?" Bradford ventured.

"Yes!" Tygan said. "Well, before Dr. Fournier's departure, I was about to present our problem."

"Yes, you were," Bradford said, crossing his arms. "You want to elaborate on that?"

"Indeed," Tygan said. "The specimen is still conscious."

" _Conscious_?" Bradford asked. "How the hell is that possible?"

"Your soldiers beat its skull, its heavily genetically manipulated and armor plated skull, with a simple baseball bat. I'm surprised they managed to dent the helmet."

"Makes sense," Bradford said. "But what about the chip? Isn't this thing in a coma?"

Tygan shrugged. "I do not have an idea. I had expected the same results to occur within this specimen. The flatlining of the vitals, the decrease in brain activity. However, none of that occurred while Dr. Fournier and I extracted the chip."

"This was just, what, Lady Luck smiling at us?" Bradford said.

Tygan adjusted his glasses and scoffed. "Central, luck or ladies have nothing to do with this. As I recall, interim Commander Claymore stated, and I quote, that 'one of the troops crushed the Captain's head in like a fucking piece of paper', end quote. Such head trauma could have caused the chip to malfunction."

"Wait. So you're telling me," Bradford said. "That if we'd smacked the Commander around a bit –"

"I am not implying any such barbaric measures!" Tygan protested.

"Relax! Tygan, I was just kidding," Bradford said.

Tygan coughed. "Of course. Of course – a joke!" Tygan forced a laugh, then clamped his lips shut. He scratched his head and cleared his throat. "In any case, this is the dilemma at hand: we have a soon-to-be-conscious Advent officer in our base, with unknown motivations and intent."

"How did you keep him under for so long?"

"Well, first of all, we're not even sure if it's a 'he'," Tygan chattered. "A preliminary examination of the subject's lower regions –"

"Why is _it_ still unconscious?"

"Sedatives," Tygan said, happy to be on a subject that he was certain of. "Advent Officers can apparently take more sedatives than a large African elephant. Or at least, that's what my model informed me, since we cannot procure a large African elephant due to their extinct nature –"

"Kill it then," Bradford said, already turning around. "It's a security risk."

"Of course, Central," Tygan said. "I will make sure to dispose of it properly."

Bradford nodded, and left the room. Once he was gone, Tygan turned and strapped on his mask.

"This will be messy," he muttered. "But it'll be fun to be back in an area that's my zone of comfort."

He grabbed a syringe, filled to the brim with a clear fluid that sparkled in the light, and then stopped.

"Then again," he pondered. "Vivisection could be possible. Either way, I'll need the saw."

Tygan did just that, and was soon dual-wielding a syringe and a saw. He gazed down at the stiff body with the same amount of care a man regards a steak with.

Of course, Tygan failed to notice a few new details. For one thing, the Captain's chest was now beginning to rise and fall with a new, slow life. Its neck muscles budged slightly, sending spit into its gullet. Eyelids stretched and twitched.

Suddenly, the Captain's enormous eyes, black as oil, flew open.

"HELBETE BETAL!" it screamed, right into Tygan's face. The scientist stumbled back.

The Captain squirmed under the blanket, kicking out and knocking Tygan's saw against the ground with a loud clatter. It then rose, knocking off the blanket and exposing its entire naked body, and ran off.

"Oh no," was all Tygan could say. And the only thought that could comfort him was that the Captain had, indeed, no external genitalia to speak of.

* * *

The fighting outside the Advent convoy was messy and brutal. The rebels and the Advent troopers fought like drunken boxers, taking wild haymakers that pounded craters into each other's faces. The XCOM operatives, veterans of Operation Gatecrasher, were a decisive blow in favor of the rebels, a single, red-gloved fist that bashed through Advent's battered defenses and knocked their forces to the floor.

Petrov leaned from his cover, an upturned truck, and sprayed another salvo of bullets, adding his gunfire to the earsplitting percussion that erupted around him. Advent forces recoiled and hunkered down, while beige fatigue-clad rebels and XCOM operatives advanced.

In a moment of sheer luck, Petrov saw one of his bullets ping against the underside of an Advent truck, immediately followed by a great column of flame. Petrov smiled as he saw three Advent troopers, roasting like barbecue coals.

Barry would have loved to do something like that. Barry…

Petrov frowned, redirecting his fire to one of screaming troopers. His heart pounded in time to the bullets' impact, one beat for each time lead met flesh.

Pound.

Pound.

Pound.

The Russian gritted his teeth, and went back to terrorizing the other Advent troops.

Unfortunately, that small few seconds was all they needed to remobilize. From the ruins of a security vehicle, another Advent MEC stepped out. Its paintjob was splattered with black soot and ash, almost like blood. Bullets clattered against its carapace, doing absolutely shit damage Turning, it saw Petrov, cocked its eyeless, smooth mechanical face at him, and started to sprint.

It didn't get far, though. A shot glided through the air, smashing into the MEC's leg. The five hundred pounds of steel fury stopped and crashed to the ground. Its legs kept winding around, flopping up and down like fish lifted from water.

"Heh," Chris muttered into Petrov's communicator. "Easy."

The MEC let out a multitude of groans, digital chirping sounds that buzzed in a harmonious sort of way. As Advent's forces retreated back further, with the sound of gunfire growing more and more distant, some of the rebels moved in to finish the machine off. Two of them beat at the thing's face with their rifles, old Ak-47s and Kalashnikovs, distorting the white metal until it caved in like a candy wrapper. Another rebel, naked except for his pants and boots, mounted it on the back, whooping a war cry before jamming a grenade into its midsection. The three of them retreated, cackling like loons, as the grenade went off, putting the thing out of its misery.

Petrov watched that with a cold kind of satisfaction, and went out to meet them.

"You know how to finish a job," Petrov applauded. "Very good."

"Shucks, mate," the shirtless man said, brown muscles gleaming in the sun. "Weren't for you and your mates, I wouldn't 'ave been able to."

Petrov narrowed his eyes. That accent was not what he expected from these… types. He scrutinized the men. The dust had cleared, and the other two, despite the thick headscarves they wore, had a lighter, fairer complexion than the shirtless man. Petrov glanced back at the shirtless man.

"Wot?" he said.

"Who are you with?" Petrov asked. "We do not know you."

The shirtless man beat a hand against his chest. "HORUS, that's wot we are. Waging the good jihad to beat back the damn devil, that's what we do." The other two men copied the motion.

"Horus?" Petrov said.

"Yeah. Haven't heard?" one of the headscarf wearing men said. "Big bloody revolutionary group in the Middle East? We're the ones that fucked up New Cairo."

"This jihad is… diverse?" Petrov asked.

"Fuck yeah," the shirtless man said. "Chris an' me, we used to bounce around Little London 'fore we heard of 'em. Now we fire a shitton of guns, and give it to those xenos, right up the fuckin' bum!" Shirtless turned and hi-fived the headscarf wearing man who spoke earlier.

"Nice. Let's move. Talk later," Petrov said.

The shirtless man hefted his gun. "Damn right. Damn right we better bloody mo –"

The man's torso exploded in several geysers of red. His head was still contorted into a wild smile as it spun off into the distance.

One of the fighters and Petrov made a break for it. The other was stalled, half out of terror, half because he'd been standing too close to the shirtless man and was now covered in a blanket of blood and entrails.

He tried to pivot and scramble for whatever cover there was, but another burst of fire caught him.

Petrov ducked back behind a rock, pressing his back against the grit. Beside him, the surviving fighter scooted in from the other side. His eyes were wide with fear and adrenaline, bugging out from the slit in his headscarf.

Petrov peeked out from the side of the rock, keeping his head low to the ground. As expected, they saw him, and he was forced to duck backwards as the magnetic rounds came flying.

But he'd seen enough. Specifically, three spots of black, and one deep red. A combat squad, likely trying to flank the rebel positions.

Petrov turned to the fighter.

"You, what do I call you?" he asked.

"Chris," the man breathed. "What about you?"

"Not needed for the plan," Petrov said. He tapped his minigun. "I fire, you move around and shoot when I call your name. Grenades if you can. Clear?"

Chris nodded.

Without warning, Petrov swung himself around the rock. Dust flew, stinging his eyes, but his fingers squeezed the trigger through electrified instinct. The gun coughed, spewing bullets into the air.

A stream of lead clipped one of the Advent troopers, shredding her shoulder and tossing her against the dirt. As her screams crawled through the air, the other troopers scattered, taking positions.

"Chris!" Petrov shouted.

Over the warbling, torrential sound of the minigun, the more precise sounds of a rifle went off. An Advent trooper went down, his face split open like a rotting watermelon. Then another fell, groaning and squirming in a circle of red.

The Captain stood alone. Sparks flew off her armor, shredding her cape, but she still stood. Her mouth curled into a grimace as she steadied herself, before lifting her gun and opening fire.

Petrov ducked back again, feeling the vibrations as the magnetic rounds drilled into the rock behind him. He lifted his gun over the rock, firing wildly into the Captain's direction, hoping to keep her attention on him long enough for Chris to run.

" _Blyad_!"

Suddenly, his vision went black. His face was tight, being squeezed by something. Then, he felt the smooth, cloth-like material against his face. A hand. Petrov gripped his gun and swung it about wildly, a last gamble.

The Advent Captain screamed something in her choppy, alien tongue, and smashed Petrov's head against the rock. She did it a second time, then a third.

Petrov felt his eyelids grow heavy, felt the pain constricting his head like a collar. The back of his head wasn't solid anymore. It was sliding out and onto his shoulders, onto the ground. His skin, his bone, his brains, falling out in a red and white waterfall.

A bang, loud like a thunderclap. Then, the feeling of something wet against his face.

Petrov opened his eyes and found himself lying on the ground. Above him, the Captain slumped against the rock. Her helmet was split open like a burst bombshell. Orange gunk seeped from her exposed pink flesh, dropping onto his face.

"P-Petrov!" Chris shouted, his voice panicky and shaky in the communicator. "Are you – are – ?"

"Fine," Petrov groaned. He blinked and rubbed the dust out of his eyes. When the pain faded, just a little, he looked back at the Captain's ruined face, and smiled.

"I got front-row tickets on this fucker's face. Fucking art," he said. "Good art."

He laughed into the communicator, ignoring the stretching and groaning in the back of his skull. A nervous titter accompanied it, and soon enough, both men were laughing.

* * *

Lily was the first to encounter the Avenger's unwanted guest. She'd been meaning to talk to Tygan about some findings she'd found regarding the Advent Captain's body armor. But instead of finding Tygan outside the research lab, she encountered a –

"MOR BALATEN!"

A naked man?

Lily rubbed her eyes, watching the pink-skinned, bug-eyed creature run past her. It continued down the corridor, providing Lily with a gracious look at its well-sculpted _gluteus maximus_.

With the image of that glorious _ass_ in her mind, it took Lily a while to realize that she needed to sound the alarm.

* * *

"The hell?" Bradford said. The lights in the command center had turned blood red, with the normal sounds of activity drowned out in a typhoon of klaxon alarms.

"A breach?" a nearby tech asked.

"We're in flight, who could've breached us?" Bradford said. To another tech: "Where's the alarm coming from?"

"Deck 4, Research Labs," the tech replied. "It's the chief engineer."

"Put her on screen," Bradford said. Lily Shen's sleek features were soon superimposed on a nearby screen.

"Lily, what the hell's going on?" Bradford asked.

"To be honest, Central, _I'm_ not entirely sure either," Lily said. "But I think we have an… intruder."

"You think?!" Bradford said.

"It's hard to tell," Lily said. "I was distracted, and then – I mean, I only caught a glimpse of it. But it appears to be –"

"CLOSE THE DOORS!" shouted Mr. Nguyen. The Vietnamese operator sprinted through the entrance, a hot cup of coffee in one hand. He didn't get far however, as _naked man_ leaped atop his shoulders.

Mr. Nguyen scrabbled for purchase, but he went down. The Captain bounced from Mr. Nguyen's shoulders and climbed onto the hologlobe, exposing every facet of its primordial body to Mission Control.

"What the fuck?" Bradford said.

"Yeah, that's it," Lily said, covering her eyes.

"Central, we filming some kind of porno here?" a tech asked.

The Captain surveyed the room, its enormous eyes blinking every now and then. It arched its back and started hissing.

"For God's sake," Bradford muttered. He reached back, popped the lock of a small box, and removed a smooth pistol. He raised the pistol and fired.

The shot went wide. The Captain screeched, muscles rippling, and sprinted towards the nearest exit.

"Contain it!" Bradford ordered. "Don't let it get away!"

The techs did their best to obey that order, but the odds were stacked. It was 18 untrained technical personnel against a single, genetically modified Advent Captain. Anyone could predict the outcome.

Men and women flew in the air as the Captain punched and kicked its way through the crowd. A hapless engineer tried to beat down the Captain with a fire extinguisher, only to be sent reeling back as the Captain concussed him with it. A pair of technicians flew into the hologlobe, before rolling onto the floor.

Then, having cleared out most of the room, the Captain ran off, its hindquarters bidding XCOM's nerve center a fond farewell.

* * *

"Get bloody _fucked_ , Jimmy!" Mrs. Sycamore screamed. Her shotgun roared in agreement, pounding a hole into an Advent trooper's stomach.

"And this one's for you, Gerald!"

The shotgun bellowed again, disarming another Advent trooper figuratively and literally.

One of the rebels glanced at Mrs. Sycamore and then at Zip.

" _Merde_. I can't tell who's weirder. You with your cat ears, or that screaming grammie," she said.

"Thank you?" Zip said. She gave a nervous smile, unsure of what exactly the strange woman was saying in that jumping, lyrical accent of hers.

The woman, thankfully, ignored her comment. She moved on with the rest of her group, leaping over crates of cargo, Advent corpses, and burning trucks towards the last remnants of the security force.

Zip stood and surveyed the area, looking for a target. Quickly, she caught sight of a lone trooper. He was retreating, clomping down the length of one of Advent's large, black flatbed trucks.

Zip drew her pistol from her hip, like Claymore told her. She looked down the sight, just like Claymore told her. Then she fired.

Unlike what Claymore had told her, however, Zip missed every shot. Magnetic bolts smashed into the floor of the flatbed truck, beating circular divots into the metal and motivating the trooper to move faster.

" _Commandant, hilf mir!"_ screamed the trooper in a hoarse, hysterical voice. He raced faster down the truck, almost reaching the end. Zip sighed in disappointment. She hadn't killed a single thing today.

" _Hilf –_ "

The trooper stumbled back, cut short by a rifle being shoved in his face. A burly, barrel-chested rebel, swathed in bandages and a bulletproof jacket, leaped atop the truck, bringing his rifle down against the trooper's head.

The trooper begged and tried to shout out again, but couldn't muster up the energy. Instead, a stream of babbling came from his mouth.

Zip looked at the scene, filled with unease and a little nausea. Memories flashed in her head. Sounds, almost similar to the ones the trooper was making, but with a bit more of a feminine screech.

More rebels climbed on top of the truck, punching, kicking, and beating the trooper with their rifles. The trooper kicked and screamed, rolling around like an upturned beetle. The sound of his armor hitting the floor repeated in a machine gun burst pattern.

Zip knelt to the ground. She felt like throwing up. Still, she grit her teeth and looked up at the roiling mass of people.

With a deep breath, she pulled out her pistol again. Aimed down the sight, and fired.

The bullet flew straight, whistling through the German wind and smashing straight into the Advent trooper's skull. The head imploded, hanging apart in tattered strips and showering the rebels' shins with blood. The trooper's arms and legs sputtered in the air for a brief second, then fell limp to the ground.

The rebels looked up, awestruck at having been fired upon by their presumed ally.

"Fucking bitch!" shouted one, raising her firearm at Zip.

"What's with the fuckin' trigger finger, mate?" one of the rebels groaned.

The others muttered as well, with a few others raising their guns in Zip's direction.

Zip froze, still on her knees.

One of the rebels, the same burly man who first struck the Advent trooper, walked over to her. Zip started to back away.

"Don't you fuckin' move!" shouted one of the rebels. She fired a few shots in the air. "Sit your ass down!"

The burly rebel reached Zip. He looked down, an outraged expression on his face. Zip's head barely went passed his blood-spattered pants.

"What were you doing," the man asked in a low voice.

"I'm here to help y –"

The man smacked her. A swift, fleeting motion that blew air across Zip's scalp.

"I asked what you were doing," he said.

Zip bit her lip. She'd been hit before. This time was no different. Go slow, be clear. Then it'll be alright.

"I," she said. "I wanted to… help that man. He didn't… deserve to be… hurt."

The man's hand went down again.

"You could've killed one of my troops," he said. "With your stupid –" He stopped. He finally saw her ears.

"Oh," he said, with a tone so dull it didn't even sound surprised. "You're city folk, aren't you." Again, louder. "You're city folk right? You with the enemy, right?"

Zip tried to muster a response, but stopped cold when the man unhooked something from his hip.

The rebel cocked the pistol now in his hand.

"Guess you're just another traitor on my tally, hm?" he said. "Guess –"

The man was cut off by a voice. A loud, warcry, brimming with blood and vengeance.

"WHO IN GOD'S GREEN EARTH IS HITTING MY BLOODY COMRADE?!"

The burly rebel turned just in time to meet the shotgun stock head on. A sickening crunch sound issued from his face, and he toppled onto the top of the truck. His pistol fell to the ground.

Behind him, Mrs. Sycamore looked at him, an expression of fury and outrage on her face. Zip could swear she saw her eyes flash red.

The man swore, rubbing his nose. Before he could get up, Mrs. Sycamore grabbed his face and jammed it into the ground.

"APOLOGISE, SONNY," Mrs. Sycamore screeched. "APOLOGISE TO MY FRIEND."

"Frck!" the man groaned. Then, as Mrs. Sycamore pushed down harder: "Frrckn sht! Mm – mm srry!"

Mrs. Sycamore let go, and grabbed him by the shoulder. Without a word, she punted him off the truck with a kick up the ass. The rebel landed in a bruised heap onto the ground.

"Hey, bitch!" cried one of the rebels, still a little dumbstruck from what just happened. "Wot you tryin' to –"

"I GAVE TEN OF THOSE GOOD FOR NOTHING ADVENT SCAMPS A DAMN WHIPPING. NOW MY BELT'S FUCKING WORN. YOU WANT THAT _WORN_ SIDE, DEAR?!" Mrs. Sycamore hollered.

The rebel shut up. Mrs. Sycamore turned and grabbed Zip by the arm.

"Move on," she grunted to Zip. "We did what we came here for. Let's get what we need and leave."

* * *

"Y'all ready?" Firebrand barked over the loudspeaker.

Zip and Banks both let out a grunt as they pushed the last supply crate into the Skyranger's cargo net. Mrs. Sycamore turned and gave the cockpit window a thumbs up.

"Move it, folks," Firebrand said. "We don't want to be here when the Advent cleanup crew comes."

Banks and Zip loaded themselves into the Skyranger. Petrov stood up, shaking a bit. He rubbed a hand against the back of his head, still slick and covered in bandages.

"You alright, dear?" Mrs. Sycamore said. She slapped Petrov's hand away. "You musn't scratch at the compress. It'll only make it worse, dear."

She grabbed Petrov's hand. "Come. Let's get a move on."

Petrov rolled his eyes, but walked along with the old bat. They were on the skyranger's ramp when they heard footsteps behind them.

"Yo!"

Mrs. Sycamore turned around and saw a young man, dressed in a headscarf, aviators, and desert camo standing behind her.

"What do you want," she said, without humor or cheer.

"Hi, nice to meetya," the man said. He turned to Petrov. "Yo, mate. You got room for one more on this bird?"

Petrov furrowed his brow. "Why aren't you going home?"

Chris scratched his head and chuckled. "Well, you saved my ass. Couldn't save Jonesy or Mic, but what could we have bloody done? Think I owe you one."

Then, looking back and forth, he leaned forward and whispered to Petrov.

"Plus, the rest of that cheeky bunch are a bunch of old cunts," he said.

Petrov snorted. Mrs. Sycamore stared, not sure what to think.

"Fine," Petrov said. "Get in."

The Skyranger bounced into the air soon after, one passenger heavier. It began to fly towards the Avenger, following the slowly descending sun.

Beneath it, a dark-skinned man in military fatigues lowered a pair of binoculars. He barked a command, and soon, dozens of engines were roaring. Several pickup trucks began to caravan away from the warzone, heading in the opposite direction of the Skyranger.


End file.
